Design of a Domain-Specific Language for Material Flow Analysis Using Microsoft DSL Tools

Abstract

Material Flow Analysis (MFA) is the procedure of measuring and assessing the mass flows of matter (solid waste, water, food...) and substances (carbon, phosphorus ...) within a process or a system for the period of time. In this paper we propose a Domain-Specific Language (DSL) to model MFA in a waste management modeling context. The result is that we integrate the DSL within a waste management modeling software called EASETECH and we show how the proposed DSL allows the domain experts to extend the software without involving of software developers.

OIL: an industrial case study in language engineering with Spoofax

“…Zarrin et al [71] report on their experiences of introducing a DSL for material flow analysis using Microsoft DSL tools. Their motivation for using the DSL is to enable domain experts to evolve existing software to fulfill new requirements.…”

Process-oriented life cycle assessment modelling in EASETECH

“…However, they were limited to the operations envisioned when EASETECH was originally developed (Clavreul et al, 2014). Moreover, in EASETECH, the only way to add new modelling features in the form of new process templates was to change the software's source code, which required recompiling and redistributing the full software package (Zarrin et al, 2014). The situation made it impossible for an LCA practitioner to add new processes and represented a barrier for expanding the applicability of the models.…”

A process-oriented life-cycle assessment (LCA) model for environmental and resource-related technologies (EASETECH)

“…To facilitate process-oriented LCA modelling in EASETECH, a range of new "operators" were developed following the principles of domain specific language illustrated in Zarrin and Baumeister (2014). The new operators allow a domain expert (a person with the relevant technological and systemic expertise) to establish the relationships between input and output for the individual unit-processes, described in the previous section.…”