Purpose
In the context of progress of sustainability science, life cycle thinking and, in particular, life cycle sustainability assessment may play a crucial role. Environmental, economic and social implications of the whole supply chain of products, both goods and services, their use and waste management, i.e. their entire life cycle from “cradle to grave” have to be considered to achieve more sustainable production and consumption patterns. Progress toward sustainability requires enhancing the methodologies for integrated assessment and mainstreaming of life cycle thinking from product development to strategic policy support. Life cycle assessment (LCA), life cycle costing (LCC) and social LCA (sLCA) already attempt to cover sustainability pillars, notwithstanding different levels of methodological development. An increasing concern on how to deal with the complexity of sustainability has promoted the development of life cycle sustainability frameworks. As a contribution to the ongoing scientific debate after the Rio+20 conference, this paper aims to present and discuss the state of the art of life cycle sustainability assessment (LCSA), giving recommendations for its further development in line with ontological, epistemological and methodological aspects of sustainability science.

Life cycle sustainability assessment in the context of sustainability science progress (part 2)

Analyzing barriers to implementing industrial symbiosis networks using DEMATEL

In order to conserve natural environments, the Circular Economy (CE) is considered as a suitable way to carry out the transition from current economic models to models of a more sustainable nature. From the biological perspective however, industrial systems are generally inefficient. Manufacturing systems from the biological perspective therefore require the incorporation of tools to support decision making, thereby enabling organizations to improve their functions and competitiveness in a global and integrated perspective. Accordingly, at meso level, eco-industrial parks are gaining importance as an approach towards ensuring CE. In this work, an ontological framework for CE, based on industrial metabolism, is developed as the technology for information and knowledge models to share the circularity of resources through industrial ecosystems, based on ecological, economic, and social criteria. The ontology developed is modelled using Ontology Web Language and integrated in an architecture based on bio-inspired Multi-Agent Systems (MAS). Moreover, a quantitative method, Ecological Network Analysis, is incorporated into MAS knowledge to analyze and establish relationships and metabolic pathways between companies, which can increase the circularity of technical nutrients and reduce biological nutrient extraction. The integrated model is applied to a case study on the product life cycle for the establishment of its metabolic pathway through an eco-industrial park. The subsequent incorporation of MAS thereby establishes the Smart Eco-Industrial Park.

Smart eco-industrial parks: A circular economy implementation based on industrial metabolism

Identifying eco-innovation in industrial symbiosis under linguistic preferences: A novel hierarchical approach

Nurturing an emerging industry’s business ecosystem always requires stakeholders’ efforts and role transformation. By systematically reviewing and studying the evolution of the Chinese electric vehicle industry, this paper constructs a three-dimensional theoretical framework including stages of business ecosystem lifecycle, stakeholder classification and functional roles, to analyse the transformation both of different stakeholders and their functional roles. The findings show that business ecosystem stakeholders have experienced role transformation following a mechanism defined as the ‘Triple Oscillation’ Model during the evolution of the emerging industry. These findings also help develop a conceptual model of agent-based system for business ecosystem evolution, which could be a starting point for further emerging industry study.

Business ecosystem and stakeholders’ role transformation: Evidence from Chinese emerging electric vehicle industry

Industrial sustainability at the regional level requires collaborative efforts from various participating agents toward common goals consisting of resource conservation, low carbon emissions, production efficiency, economic viability, and corporate social responsibility. Our existing socio-technical systems should transition or evolve towards achieving systems sustainability. This study aims to operationalize the notion of systems sustainability by developing an Agent-based Model (ABM) framework for two potential industrial ecosystems: The Picardie/Champagne-Ardenne oilseed crops agriculture (France). Such applications of agent-based modeling can show possible evolutionary trajectories of given scenarios under different conditions and geographical contexts. In this paper we view these economic activities along with their associated partners (suppliers, customers, government agencies etc) and the natural environment in which they operate to be complex adaptive systems. Therefore, industrial eco-parks organized around agricultural products and the pulp and paper industries are relevant areas of application for ABM. This task will help identify and provide a contextual analysis of the structural factors and main driving forces for the development of industrial symbiosis along the lines of prospective scenarios (ecological constraints; regulations, economic, cultural and behavioural contexts; carbon markets; technological routes, etc). The current model focuses on the cultural and behavioral aspects with the following research question: What are the behavioral factors that favor the development of an industrial symbiosis?.

Agent-based Modelling Simulation for the Development of an Industrial Symbiosis - Preliminary Results

Forest-based product industry has been undergoing regulatory reform worldwide for more than a decade, aiming to reduce carbon emissions, fossil fuel use, and economic efficiency. Some of this profit-driven behavior exacerbates greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. At the same time, interest has increased in use of market-based policy instruments for environmental purposes, for example, to introduce climate change into the energy sector and reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. The need to mitigate ecological impacts, especially GHG emissions, and energy use have highlighted the need to develop methods capable of addressing economic and ecological uncertainties consistently within an integrated framework. Implementing an Agent-Based Modeling (ABM) tool within an industrial ecosystem requires a shift in the current culture of researchers working at distributed sites with individual outcomes to a culture that includes the pooling of capabilities, sharing of information, materials, technology, and knowledge. The application of simulation modeling, e.g., ABM, will provide broader insights on the potential of dynamic simulation modeling for large scale projects on complex system that would otherwise require infrastructure use to test the feasibility of the model. From an industrial network perspective, ABM seems to be useful to model large scale system, by feeding the system with rules corresponding to the assumptions of what is most relevant regarding the situation within the industrial eco-park and then watch the emerging behavior from the agents' interactions. A discussion covers how this concept of sustainable assessment can be achieved on a practical realization; how the forest-based product industry can be seen as a dynamic system, and how an industrial eco-park can be built around this regional industry. This is an abstract of a paper presented at the 2012 AIChE Spring Meeting and 8th Global Congress on Process Safety (Houston, TX 4/1-5/2012).

Najet Bichraoui

Papers

Agent-based Modelling Simulation for the Development of an Industrial Symbiosis - Preliminary Results

Application of agent-based modeling (ABM) of an integrated system modeling framework for designing a sustainable industrial park