Agent-based model for simulation of the sustainability revolution in eco-industrial parks

Abstract

Eco-industrial parks (EIPs) are of increasing importance for implementing industrial ecology strategies and are facing increasing challenges in terms of environmental pollution and resource scarcity. As a complex adaptive system, an EIP involves multiple sectors and faces various disturbances that influence its evolutionary trajectories. This study adopts an agent-based model to simulate the material flows and industrial symbiosis process in the EIP, considering the initiative of each company and the ever-changing environment. The proposed EIP model emphasises the heterogeneity of companies and attempts to reflect multiple and dynamic factors that have received less attention in previous studies. This model contains two types of agents, companies and the external environment. A company agent makes decisions and interacts with other agents following its own behaviour rules, while the external environment agent functions to coordinate the material flows and exert influence on the companies. The model has been verified and validated by simulating a 20-year-period development of an empirical EIP in China. The simulation results are assessed by three indicators: eco-connectance, eco-efficiency, and industrial symbiosis indicator. Results showed that during the growing phase, the eco-connectance increased from 0.02 to 0.1 for the non-disturbance situation. The eco-efficiency and industrial symbiosis indicator also realised 78.5% and 74.8% of their total increments. The outcome of this research provides insights for the design of the strategies to improve the industrial symbiosis performance and is of high potential to facilitate EIPs in promoting eco-transformation and sustainable development.

Sustainable Industrial Parks and their Impact in Ecuador: A Systematic Review of the Literature

“…The Industrial Revolution has recorded in its origin phenomena of a technological and economic nature, presenting radical alterations in the secondary sector and in commercial logistics connections, besides accelerating the style of adaptation, work, interaction between people, including their lifestyle (Beltrami et al, 2021;González et al, 2019;Han et al, 2022).…”

“…An EPI represents a better version of an industrial cluster with various entities interacting with each other through the exchange of waste/resources or energy in each case in order to achieve optimal work, and offers a complex adaptive system (CAS) involving multiple sectors and non-linear interactive behaviors. The case of Symbiosis in Kalundborg Denmark who since 1970 has inspired for 40 years around the world the intervention of an EPI that offers considerable changes in economic and environmental benefits through in-industrial symbiosis is exposed (Han et al, 2022).…”

“…The ABM highlights the potential IS relationships to facilitate a modeling of interrelationships between agents through an inductive or bottom-up approach to simulate CAS dynamics, involves the heterogeneous behaviors of plants, companies or entities involved and evaluates the impact on the overall performance within the EPI (Han et al, 2022). Meza, 2013b;Luján, 2003;Sánchez-Trujillo et al, 2013b;Woldu, 2022).…”

Critical network factors for eco‐innovation in manufacturing: A Delphi study from a triple helix perspective

“…In these contexts, the dynamics of eco‐innovation networks highly depend on ongoing social network relationships established among different parties (e.g., industry, academia and government) to build shared values, trust and mutuality that are necessary for collective action (Baker et al, 2011; Keast & Brown, 2002) and for strategic management of innovation (Demirel & Kesidou, 2019). Evidence suggests that these network collaborations broadly promote (i) industrial symbiosis in which by‐products serve as raw materials for collaborators (Södergren & Palm, 2021; Han et al, 2022) and (ii) sustainable partnerships and product‐service systems that emphasise resource efficiency, end‐of‐pipe attitudes, dematerialisation strategies and life‐cycle‐oriented design (Erkoyuncu et al, 2019; Durugbo & Amoah, 2019; Wang et al, 2020). These advancements foster shifts in the mind‐sets of manufacturers and foci of manufacturing processes away from eco‐destructive operations that negatively impact environments and communities towards more environmentally friendly technologies in trends that contribute to more functional and green economies.…”

The role of eco-industrial parks in promoting circular economy technologies in the regions

“…One of the types of circular economy technologies is industrial symbiosis. Y. Liu, D. Kröhling, F. Han, I. Saha, S. Barile, S. Foong, G. Das, and S. Nuhu described the use of industrial symbiosis in eco-industrial parks [4,[12][13][14][15][16][17][18].…”