An Assessment of European Information Technology Tools to Support Industrial Symbiosis

Abstract

Industrial symbiosis (IS) has proven to bring collective benefits to multiple stakeholders by minimising underutilised resources, sharing knowledge and improving business and technical processes. In Europe alone, over €130 million have been invested since 2006 in research projects that enable IS by developing a methodology, tool, software, platform or network that facilitates the uptake of IS by different economic actors. This paper discusses and assesses information technology (IT) developments for supporting IS in Europe, following the five-stage methodology of Grant et al. (2010). It provides guidance to the applicants and reviewers of publicly funded research projects by listing the developments and gaps in the newly developed IT tools for IS. Content analysis of publicly available information on 20 IS supporting IT tools reveals a strong focus on synergy identification but a lack of support for the implementation stage of IS. The paper indicates that a vast quantity of IT tools and knowledge is created during the IT tool development stage and newer IT tools now also include implicit information for identifying IS. It was found that successfully operational IT tools are either part of a national or local IS programme or owned by a private company. The paper ends with the recommendation that better mechanisms are needed to ensure that publicly funded IS-supporting IT tools successfully reach the market.

Fostering Circular Economy Through the Analysis of Existing Open Access Industrial Symbiosis Databases

“…The outputs of this study are not limited to its own boundaries, but can also affect existing tools [25] aimed at facilitating IS according to the geographic context of the companies involved. Therefore, depending on the type of company, these tools might provide general recommendations tailored to their corresponding business sectors using the refined information produced in this research, such as compatible donor and recipient companies, useful waste to be either donated or received, etc.…”

“…This step started with the screening of existing databases, in order to select those that best fitted the requirements for creating concise and easy-to-understand IS information. The design of tools to support IS has increased a lot during the past decade [25]. However, as pointed out before, most of these tools focus on providing companies with a computerized means to search for new synergies, lacking information about previous cases.…”

A Case Study of Industrial Symbiosis in the Humber Region Using the EPOS Methodology

“…They help to define a common understanding between different industrial sectors, thus enhancing the communication and the exchange of knowledge and information between industries. They can be used by non-experts and users from different industrial sectors, thus following one of the recommendations made by Maqbool et al [95] to develop tools that could be used to solve cross-sectoral problems. In particular, an IS facilitator can use them to limit the conflict of interest and ensure that the approach stays collaborative during the development of the symbiosis.…”

“…They can provide solutions for both individual actors and at region level such as Looplocal [99]. Some relevant references propose comparative analyses of these existing methods and tools [59,65,95,100] or suggest classifications according to their type, function, and data used [101,102]. Without comparing the EPOS methodology to each individual tool, this literature review enables the identification of its main advantages and weaknesses from an operational point of view.…”

Quantifying the direct network effect for online platforms supporting industrial symbiosis: an agent-based simulation study

“…In addition to the direct benefits created for the involved companies, indirect environmental benefits can be created for the overall society, for instance in form of CO2 emissions as input for production activities (e.g., Martin and Eklund, 2011;Wen et al, 2018) -or provide economic incentives to companies operating IS (e.g., Tao et al, 2019;Velenturf, 2016). Nevertheless, a useful strategy is providing companies with online tools supporting them in creating IS relationships, e.g., online platforms that act as facilitators of communication and distributors of knowledge among firms (Low et al, 2018;Maqbool et al, 2018;van Capelleveen et al, 2018a). In fact, in a given geographical area where there is availability of a given waste, potential waste users might be not aware of such availability because of the lack of information (e.g., Madsen et al, 2015).…”