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The objective of the MEANS platform is to allow research teams from INRAE and its academic partners to perform multicriteria assessment of the sustainability of systems of crop production, livestock production and processing of agricultural products. They are divided into four missions:

• Develop and provide multicriteria assessment computer tools to calculate sustainability indicators
• Develop and share databases for multicriteria assessment
• Train and provide support to users
• Monitor scientific and technological advances in multicriteria assessment

Activities of the operational team

Through its portal, the MEANS platform provides access to reference methods:

• Developed in whole or in part by INRAE, CIRAD and their partners.
• Published, in national or international scientific journals, or presented at conferences.
• Used by a large number of users in a research context

It also provides access to software tools dedicated to multicriteria analysis.

The MEANS platform team also develops its own tools. Currently, the platform focuses on environmental analysis. The MEANS team has developed a software tool with the support of ADEME (The French Environment and Energy Management Agency), called MEANS-InOut, which facilitates the performance of Life Cycle Assessments (LCA) of agricultural and agri-food production systems. The MEANS-InOut application is currently operational for the study of crop production, animal production and product processing systems.

Implementing methods and tools dedicated to all three dimensions of sustainability (economic, social and environmental dimensions) is a medium-to-long-term objective.

The Platform is a partner of ADEME's AGRIBALYSE^® project , which aims to produce reference data for environmental analysis of agricultural products. The MEANS platform implements the tools to generate and update the databases that will be accessible to AGRIBALYSE partners.

The MEANS platform team actively participates in the work of the GIS REVALIM, which is responsible for updating the data for the environmental display of food products.