An online data management tool to implement industrial symbiosis projects towards a circular economy

ended

The demand for resources (water, food, energy, land and minerals) is continuously increasing, given the rising purchasing power of a growing populatiThe demand for resources (water, food, energy, land and minerals) is continuously increasing, given the rising purchasing power of a growing population. The global resource extraction is projected to reach an estimated value of 184 billion tonnes in 2050 and the supply could be further aggravated by climate change, making natural resources increasingly scarce and more expensive. Hence, industrial symbiosis is the tool to implement circular economy into the manufacturing sector: it’s the process by which waste or by-products of an industry or industrial process become the raw materials for another. Big data analysis is a promising approach to identify the potential industrial symbioses within the perimeter of a large industrialized city. However, industrial symbiosis hasn’t been widely implemented because resource input and waste output data aren’t disclosed or collected, making data-driven and optimisation solutions very difficult to implement. Simbiosy has developed Síner, an industrial symbiosis project management software that manages and estimates resources (raw materials, waste, water and energy) and waste (wastewater, residual heat) data of the industries within a given territory. Síner gathers data from different sources and processes it via Big Data tools and algorithms that are capable to estimate the unavailable data. The aim of the phase 1 project is to improve our understanding of the EU market for industrial symbiosis management tools, identify regional market variations in terms of purchase decision makers, appropriate business models, pricing structure and identify which are the most attractive markets for us to use as a beachhead. In the EU, circular activities generated almost € 147 billion in value added and account for €17.5 billion worth of investments. We plan to target 16,884 municipalities.