Published!

Congratulations, everyone!

The paper entitled: Circularity Information Platform for the Built Environment is now published in a world-wide flagship journal: Automation in Construction.

I would love to express our sincere gratitude to you and your organisations on behalf of our research team. This work cannot be accomplished without your feedback and remarks. Your opinions enrich the research and offer a safer landing from theories to the practice.

1. Main Result

The main findings and conclusions are summarised below:

• The basic structure of a Circularity Information Platform (CIP) is proposed;
• The main functions of CIP are identified;
• A web-based prototype of CIP is developed;
• The proposed CIP can be helpful to accelerate Circular Economy (CE) transition;
• We provide a CIP design manual for users and developers in different contexts.

Regarding real-life implementation challenges, we learned that:

• It is difficult to absorb the entire design in the workshop within a limited time;
• It is challenging to ensure the data collection at a national level: wrong data are worse than no data;
• A web-based prototype of CIP is developed;
• It might be inappropriate to set the evaluation scope of CE at a national level since there are intensive cross-border collaborations;
• CIP could provide more efficient pathways to CE by incorporating "reduce" to a greater extent. Think about what we can do before demolition;
• The development of CIP requires long-term efforts and qualified workforces in both governmental and industrial sectors.

We acknowledged your contributions at the end of the article anonymously to protect your privacy because your opinions are personal.

The full-text article is published under Open Access policy: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.autcon.2023.104933

2. Next Step

We have made some progresses on the matchmaking simulation model. Soon, we will provide you with more information. Meanwhile, please contact us if you want to share your ideas and thoughts about how to take CIP one step further!

Aligned with the paradigm of Smart Circular Construction Ecosystems, we believe in a future for Open Access Building Information Space where buildings can “communicate” for the sustainable benefit of our next generations. The main idea is presented as follows:

“It is time to reveal a more inclusive landscape of Circular Economy in the built environment. Existing structures are interactive, and interactions make them more complex, chaotic, but stronger and resilient. We can no longer ignore these interactions and only aim for “new” buildings with “new” materials. The development of methods to identify, coordinate, and evaluate symbiotic building interactions remains an open issue. We raise attention to this issue and call for multi-disciplinary research to ensure future interventions are as sustainable, measurable, and meaningful as possible.”

Dutch government bodies and University of Twente have increased attention and support to sustainable research continuously. We are confident to take our study further, take you hand-in-hand further, take the Twente region further, take the Netherlands further, to a climate-crisis-free future.

While we elevate Dutch society’s competitiveness, sustainability, and liveability, we actually manifest our beliefs and set an example for the world.

Thank you, everyone!