scholarly journals A Bottom-up Ontology-based Approach to Monitor Circular Economy: Aligning User Expectations, Tools, Data and Theory

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rusne Sileryte ◽  
Alexander Wandl ◽  
Arjan van Timmeren

With circular economy being high on governmental agendas, there is an increasing request from governing bodies for circularity measurements. Yet currently existing macro-level monitoring frameworks are widely criticized for not being able to inform the decision making. The reasons behind their failure stem from a lack of consensus on terminologies and definitions among scholars, politicians and practitioners, a lack of supporting data and tools and, consequently, a lack of transparency and trustworthiness.To fulfill those needs, a bottom-up approach to build a shared terminology is suggested by involving macro-framework users within a government, data providers and tool developers. Their expertise and expectations for monitoring the transition are elicited through the process of formal ontology development and alignment.The ontology development experiment builds upon a use case of the Amsterdam Circular Economy Monitor (2020). First, four ontology development approaches are used to create a theory-centered, a user-centered, a tool-centered and a data-centered ontology. The ontologies are later compared, merged, and aligned with each other to arrive at one single ontology. The notes taken during the process are used to provide a detailed discussion on common concepts, identified conflicts, and gaps in monitoring expectations between the monitor users, data, tools, and the latest theory.

Author(s):  
Seunghwa Park ◽  
Inhan Kim

Today’s buildings are getting larger and more complex. As a result, the traditional method of manually checking the design of a building is no longer efficient since such a process is time-consuming and laborious. It is becoming increasingly important to establish and automate processes for checking the quality of buildings. By automatically checking whether buildings satisfy requirements, Building Information Modeling (BIM) allows for rapid decision-making and evaluation. In this context, the work presented here focuses on resolving building safety issues via a proposed BIM-based quality checking process. Through the use case studies, the efficiency and usability of the devised strategy is evaluated. This research can be beneficial in promoting the efficient use of BIM-based communication and collaboration among the project party concerned for improving safety management. In addition, the work presented here has the potential to expand research efforts in BIM-based quality checking processes.


Author(s):  
Anjali Mullick ◽  
Jonathan Martin

Advance care planning (ACP) is a process of formal decision-making that aims to help patients establish decisions about future care that take effect when they lose capacity. In our experience, guidance for clinicians rarely provides detailed practical advice on how it can be successfully carried out in a clinical setting. This may create a barrier to ACP discussions which might otherwise benefit patients, families and professionals. The focus of this paper is on sharing our experience of ACP as clinicians and offering practical tips on elements of ACP, such as triggers for conversations, communication skills, and highlighting the formal aspects that are potentially involved. We use case vignettes to better illustrate the application of ACP in clinical practice.


Author(s):  
Dan Wang ◽  
Xinrui Cui ◽  
Rabab Ward ◽  
Z. Jane Wang
Keyword(s):  

Legal Studies ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 1-18
Author(s):  
Claire Hamilton

Abstract The changes to the Irish exclusionary rule introduced by the judgment in People (DPP) v JC mark an important watershed in the Irish law of evidence and Irish legal culture more generally. The case relaxed the exclusionary rule established in People (DPP) v Kenny, one of the strictest in the common law world, by creating an exception based on ‘inadvertence’. This paper examines the decision through the lens of legal culture, drawing in particular on Lawrence Friedman's distinction between ‘internal’ and ‘external’ legal culture to help understand the factors contributing to the decision. The paper argues that Friedman's concept and, in particular, the dialectic between internal and external legal culture, holds much utility at a micro as well as macro level, in interrogating the cultural logics at work in judicial decision-making.


2018 ◽  
Vol 174 ◽  
pp. 01006 ◽  
Author(s):  
Břetislav Teplý ◽  
Tomáš Vymazal ◽  
Pavla Rovnaníková

Efficient sustainability management requires the use of tools which allow material, technological and construction variants to be quantified, measured or compared. These tools can be used as a powerful marketing aid and as support for the transition to “circular economy”. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) procedures are also used, aside from other approaches. LCA is a method that evaluates the life cycle of a structure from the point of view of its impact on the environment. Consideration is given also to energy and raw material costs, as well as to environmental impact throughout the life cycle - e.g. due to emissions. The paper focuses on the quantification of sustainability connected with the use of various types of concrete with regard to their resistance to degradation. Sustainability coefficients are determined using information regarding service life and "eco-costs". The aim is to propose a suitable methodology which can simplify decision-making in the design and choice of concrete mixes from a wider perspective, i.e. not only with regard to load-bearing capacity or durability.


2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Chang Liu ◽  
Pratibha Rani ◽  
Khushboo Pachori

PurposeDue to stern management policies and increased community attentiveness, sustainable supply chain management (SSCM) performs a vast component in endeavor operation and production management. Sustainable circular supplier selection (SCSS) and evaluation presented the environmental and social concerns in the fields of circular economy and sustainable supplier selection. Choosing the optimal SCSS is vital for organizations to persuade SSCM, as specified in various researches. Based on the subjectivity of human behavior, the selection of ideal SCSS often involves uncertain information, and the Pythagorean fuzzy sets (PFSs) have a huge capability to tackle strong vagueness, uncertainty and inaccuracy in the multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) procedure. Here, a framework is developed to assess and establish suitable suppliers in the SSCM and the circular economy.Design/methodology/approachThis paper introduced an extended framework using the evaluation based on distance from average solution (EDAS) with PFSs and implemented it to solve the SCSS in the manufacturing sector. Firstly, the PFSs to handle the uncertain information of decision experts (DEs) is employed. Secondly, a novel divergence measure and parametric score function for calculating the criteria weights are proposed. Thirdly, an extended decision-making approach, known as PF-EDAS, is introduced.FindingsThe outcomes and comparative discussion show that the developed method is efficient and capable of facilitating the DEs to choose desirable SCSS. Therefore, the proposed framework can be used by organizations to assess and establish suitable suppliers in the SCSS process in the circular economy.Originality/valueSelecting the optimal sustainable circular supplier (SCS) in the manufacturing sector is important for organizations to persuade SSCM, as specified in various research. However, corresponding to the subjectivity of human behavior, the selection of the best SCS often involves uncertain information, and the PFSs have a huge capability to tackle strong vagueness, uncertainty and inaccuracy in the MCDM procedure. Hence, manufacturing companies' administrators can implement the developed method to assess and establish suitable suppliers in the SCSS process in the circular economy.


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