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Sustainability
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System Design and Analysis for Sustainability
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System Design and Analysis for Sustainability

A special issue of Sustainability (ISSN 2071-1050). This special issue belongs to the section "Environmental Sustainability and Applications".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (30 June 2022) | Viewed by 12244

Special Issue Editors

Dr. Ayalew Kassahun

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Information Technology Group, Wageningen University, Wageningen, The Netherlands
Interests: supply chain information systems; transparency and traceability; agri-food data science
Prof. Dr. Cagatay Catal

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
1. Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Qatar University, Doha, Qatar
2. Department of Computer Engineering, Bahcesehir University, Istanbul, Turkey
3. Information Technology Group, Wageningen University & Research, Wageningen, The Netherlands
Interests: software engineering; information systems; big data; data analytics; systems analysis and design
Prof. Dr. Bedir Tekinerdogan

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Information Technology Group, Wageningen University, 6708 PB Wageningen, The Netherlands
Interests: software engineering; software architecture; systems engineering; smart systems; critical infrastructures; software ecosystems; system of systems
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Dr. Cor Verdouw

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Information Technology Group, Wageningen University, Wageningen, The Netherlands
Interests: supply chain management; smart farming; data-driven agri-food systems; enterprise information systems
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Global initiatives such as the UN’s Paris Agreement and the EU’s Green Deal call upon us to reduce environmental degradation and adapt to climate change. In order to deal with these challenges, a transformation of the complete value-adding system is needed that goes beyond incremental improvements of sustainablity. Modern digital technologies, including big data, machine learning, the Internet of Things (IoT), and Blockchain, are very promising drivers and enablers of such a transformation. They can be used to design and implement new sustainable value chains. Several sustainable design approaches and solutions have been suggested in the scientific literature. Despite the extensive literature on system design and analysis on sustainability, a design framework that could tie the diverse design approaches is still lacking. It is, therefore, difficult to evaluate and compare design solutions. While there is a call for more sustainable and circular approaches, reference design approaches, such as the SCOR model, are originally based on the linear take–make–dispose model of resource utilization. Moreover, the existing frameworks are generally ad-hoc and not based on sound design principles.

In this Special Issue, we aim to gather contributions focusing on system design and analysis approaches for sustainable value chains. Possible topics to be addressed include the following:

  1. Secondary studies (systematic reviews, survey studies) on approaches and frameworks on designing sustainable systems such as SCOR, GRI, and ISO 14001;
  2. Requirements and evaluation criteria for sustainable system designs;
  3. Architecture design for sustainability that addresses national, regional, and global sustainability accords;
  4. Systems for sustainability compliance and monitoring;
  5. System-of-systems approaches for sustainability;
  6. System dynamics approaches for sustainable design;
  7. Data science and AI approaches for analysis of sustainable systems;
  8. Adoption of advanced technologies such as IoT, Blockchain, and cloud computing for sustainable design;
  9. Industrial experiences and case studies of designs of sustainable value chains, circular economy ecosystems, and circular production systems.

Dr. Ayalew Kassahun
Prof. Dr. Cagatay Catal
Prof. Dr. Bedir Tekinerdogan
Dr. Cor Verdouw
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Sustainability is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • design frameworks
  • sustainable design cases
  • sustainability frameworks
  • sustainability metrics
  • sustainability requirements
  • systainable system-of-systems
  • big data analytics
  • machine learning

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Published Papers (3 papers)

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Research

26 pages, 12916 KiB  
Article
Circular Business Processes in the State-of-the-Practice: A Survey Study
by Tanja van Engelenhoven, Ayalew Kassahun and Bedir Tekinerdogan
Sustainability 2021, 13(23), 13307; https://doi.org/10.3390/su132313307 - 1 Dec 2021
Cited by 5 | Viewed by 2756
Abstract
Despite increasing global environmental concerns, we continue to consume large amounts of products with little regard to what happens before, during, and after their use. Roughly one-third of the food produced is wasted. Because the world’s population is expected to grow to 10 [...] Read more.
Despite increasing global environmental concerns, we continue to consume large amounts of products with little regard to what happens before, during, and after their use. Roughly one-third of the food produced is wasted. Because the world’s population is expected to grow to 10 billion by 2050, adopting circular economy practices will become essential. The transition towards a circular economy requires adopting business processes that support circular economy practices across supply chains. Currently, the SCOR (Supply Chain Operations Reference) model is the most widely used, and widely known, approach for studying and evaluating supply chain business processes. It is, however, unclear to what extent circular principles are included in the SCOR model. Past studies indicating missing processes for circular supply chain management in the SCOR model have made limited efforts in capturing the current state-of-the-practice. We conducted an online survey of 60 companies engaged in 14 different types of economic activities to study the SCOR level 2 business processes adopted in practice. In addition to the 22 level 2 business processes documented in SCOR, we identified six additional level 2 circular business processes that the respondents recognized as being commonly applied within their businesses. The results clearly show that the current SCOR model does not fully represent circular business processes in the state-of-the-practice. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue System Design and Analysis for Sustainability)
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29 pages, 1793 KiB  
Article
Analyzing and Designing Business Processes in the Ghana Cocoa Supply Chain for Supporting Inclusiveness
by Emmanuel Ahoa, Ayalew Kassahun, Bedir Tekinerdogan and Cor Verdouw
Sustainability 2021, 13(22), 12440; https://doi.org/10.3390/su132212440 - 11 Nov 2021
Cited by 4 | Viewed by 4891
Abstract
Ghana produces 20% of global cocoa output and is the second-largest producer and exporter of cocoa beans in the world. The Ghana cocoa industry is, however, challenged by a lack of adequate decision support systems across the supply chain. Particularly, cocoa farmers have [...] Read more.
Ghana produces 20% of global cocoa output and is the second-largest producer and exporter of cocoa beans in the world. The Ghana cocoa industry is, however, challenged by a lack of adequate decision support systems across the supply chain. Particularly, cocoa farmers have limited access to information, which impedes planning, pricing, benchmarking, and quality management. In order to address this asymmetric access to information and ensure fair access to information that will allow the making of informed decisions, the supply chain stakeholders need to adapt their business processes. For identifying the requirements for better information flow, we identified the existing (as-is) processes through a systematic survey study in Ghana. We then identified the main problems and bottlenecks, designed new (to-be) business processes, and showed how IT systems support and enable inclusive business models in the Ghana cocoa industry. To enable inclusiveness, we incorporated IT solutions that improve information flows towards cocoa farmers. The results show that there are many opportunities (e.g., improving farmer livelihoods and a potential increase in export earnings) in the cocoa sector for Ghana and all stakeholders that can be utilized when there is chain-wide collaboration, equitable access to services, and proper use of IT systems. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue System Design and Analysis for Sustainability)
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17 pages, 4739 KiB  
Article
Design of a Data Management Reference Architecture for Sustainable Agriculture
by Görkem Giray and Cagatay Catal
Sustainability 2021, 13(13), 7309; https://doi.org/10.3390/su13137309 - 30 Jun 2021
Cited by 13 | Viewed by 3249
Abstract
Effective and efficient data management is crucial for smart farming and precision agriculture. To realize operational efficiency, full automation, and high productivity in agricultural systems, different kinds of data are collected from operational systems using different sensors, stored in different systems, and processed [...] Read more.
Effective and efficient data management is crucial for smart farming and precision agriculture. To realize operational efficiency, full automation, and high productivity in agricultural systems, different kinds of data are collected from operational systems using different sensors, stored in different systems, and processed using advanced techniques, such as machine learning and deep learning. Due to the complexity of data management operations, a data management reference architecture is required. While there are different initiatives to design data management reference architectures, a data management reference architecture for sustainable agriculture is missing. In this study, we follow domain scoping, domain modeling, and reference architecture design stages to design the reference architecture for sustainable agriculture. Four case studies were performed to demonstrate the applicability of the reference architecture. This study shows that the proposed data management reference architecture is practical and effective for sustainable agriculture. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue System Design and Analysis for Sustainability)
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