Data Management to Bridge Bioeconomy and Circular Economy

Dear Colleagues,

The journal Sustainability (ISSN 2071-1050, IF 3.889) is currently running a Special Issue entitled “Data Management to Bridge Bioeconomy and Circular Economy”, for which we are serving as Guest Editors. We think you could make an excellent contribution, based on your expertise.

Today more than ever, our society is struggling to cope with multiple and concurrent social and environmental macrotrends. Population surge and urbanization are increasing the demand for more resources to satisfy human needs. Natural finite resources are constantly and increasingly being exploited in an indiscriminate way, with sustained requests for higher amounts of energy flows. Wastes (of whatever type and composition) are overflowing into both biological and urban landscapes. Climate change, resulting from pollution produced by uncontrolled human activities, have reached high levels of human and financial costs. Efforts in studying how to boost environmental sustainability by balancing it with social and economic sustainability have been noticed in the extant literature. Among all the various aspects, circular economy (CE) has been considered a great driver in this direction. CE takes the name of circular manufacturing (CM) when a set of CM strategies is concurrently applied in circular companies’ business models, networks of firms, and supply chains [1]. In this context, studies in the extant literature demonstrate how to boost the adoption of CM in manufacturing companies by relying on the exploitation of digital technologies and data [2]. For discrete manufacturing companies in particular, data management has been investigated to study the type of data and information needed to be collected, analyzed, and shared in CM, the stakeholders involved for the data exchange, and the technological supports [3]. Nevertheless, although CM can facilitate the embracement of bioeconomy [4,5] based on the recirculation of urban and industrial waste and resources, few efforts to date have been dedicated to exploring how to properly use data in this context. To report an example, biomethane, generated from the collection of municipal solid waste, allows the substitution of nonrenewable with biological resources. This enables reducing the presence of biowaste in landfills and increasing biomass usage thanks to the circular treatment of waste. Indeed, energy recovery from residues and waste has been recognized as a model of a circular economy [6], and the biogas–biomethane chain has potential in terms of sustainability [7,8]. A gap still remains regarding how to model data to bridge CE and bioeconomy. The goal is to study how to enable the establishment of circular flows of resources functional for the creation of a circular bioeconomy. Digital platforms could be employed as a lever to bolster the creation of circular supply chains able to exploit data at an extended level and to sustain the foundation of sustainable communities able to address the bioeconomy purpose with a macro level of industrial symbiosis. The social and environmental benefits and impacts of a systematized production and management of bioenergy, driven by data, are huge.

In this regard, this Special Issue aims to boost research in the domain of data management for the bioeconomy by bridging the potentialities of the CE with those of bioeconomy based on data exploitation. We welcome papers on:

• The exploration of the type of data needed to be collected, analyzed, and shared in a bioeconomy, the stakeholders involved in this context, and the supporting technologies enabling establishment of the flows of functional resources for the creation of a circular bioeconomy;
• The use and adaptation of already existing digital platforms or the development of new ones for the establishment of an innovative ecosystem boosting the social sustainability of cities, regions, and nations based on data exchange for the creation of flows of bioresources;
• The definition of models for the exploitation of bioresources enabling the independence of entities such as firms, cities, regions, and nations from external entities. Hence, based on data exploitation, renewable sources of energy can be easily created thanks to the biowaste treatments that can be established;
• Exploration of the strategic role that the creation of proper data flows has in the establishment of communities exploiting renewable sources of energies generated thanks to the structured collection of urban solid waste;
• The study of circular supply chains exploiting the integration of digital platforms and industry 4.0 for the management of biomass flows.
• Methods, software, and tools facilitating users to realize the actual effects of CE and bioeconomy, evidence of which could be in the flows of materials and energy related to a specific setting of the plant and of the adopted wastes. These methods could support plant managers to rapidly evaluate the economic and environmental sustainability of their plant (and such an analysis could also be conducted prior to potentially investing in a specific technology).
• The implementation of a digital twin of the plant allowing the capability to collect and analyze biomethane/biogas plants through real-time data gathered through sensors. This could initially support the internal measurement of circular flows going through the plant and, second, trigger more effective alignment of the plant resources with its external stakeholders, paving the way toward establishing a circular bioeconomy community.

References

1. Acerbi, F.; Taisch, M. Information flows supporting Circular Economy adoption in the manufacturing sector. In Lalic B.; Majstorovic V.; Marjanovic U.; von Cieminski G., R.D. (Ed.), IFIP International Conference on Advances in Production Management Systems. Springer, Cham, 2022, 703–710. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-57997-5_81
2. Acerbi, F.; Sassanelli, C.; Terzi, S.; Taisch, M. A Systematic Literature Review on Data and Information Required for Circular Manufacturing Strategies Adoption. Sustainability, 2021, 13, 1–27. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.3390/su13042047
3. Acerbi, F.; Sassanelli, C.; Taisch, M. A conceptual data model promoting data-driven circular manufacturing. Oper Manag Res, 2022, https://doi.org/10.1007/s12063-022-00271-x
4. D’Adamo, I.; Gastaldi, M.; Morone, P.; Rosa, P.; Sassanelli, C.; Settembre-blundo, D.; Shen, Y. Bioeconomy of Sustainability: Drivers, Opportunities and Policy Implications. Sustainability, 2022, 14, 1–7. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.3390/ su14010200
5. D’adamo, I.; Sassanelli, C. Biomethane Community: A Research Agenda towards Sustainability. Sustainability, 2022, 14, 1–22. https://doi.org/10.3390/SU14084735
6. Tomić, T.; Schneider, D.R. The role of energy from waste in circular economy and closing the loop concept – Energy analysis approach. Renew Sust Energ Rev., 2018, 98, 268–287. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rser.2018.09.029
7. Baena-Moreno, F.M.; Malico, I.; Marques, I.P. Promoting sustainability: Wastewater treatment plants as a source of biomethane in regions far from a high-pressure grid. a real portuguese case study. Sustainability, 2021, 13, 8933. https://doi.org/10.3390/su13168933
8. Lindfors, A.; Feiz, R.; Eklund, M.; Ammenberg, J. Assessing the potential, performance and feasibility of urban solutions: Methodological considerations and learnings from biogas solutions. Sustainability, 2019, 11, 3756. https://doi.org/10.3390/su11143756

Dr. Federica Acerbi
Dr. Claudio Sassanelli
Prof. Dr. Giorgio Mossa
Prof. Dr. Marco Taisch
Guest Editors

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• bioeconomy
• circular economy
• circular manufacturing
• data management
• Industry 4.0