Industrial Symbiosis as a Social Process

Industrial symbiosis is a process in which firms in regional industrial systems engage in the exchange of by-products and sharing of utilities and services in order to improve their environmental and economic performance. Industrial symbiosis has a prominent social dimension. To capture the social dimension concepts from the social sciences have been introduced to the field. This thesis makes one of the first attempts to bring these together in an integrated conceptual framework. The social dimension of industrial symbiosis refers specifically to the institutional capacity of actors to coordinate their actions and interactions towards industrial symbiosis. In the thesis, the implications of the conceptual framework are tested through empirical studies, the results of which are used to present an improved framework in the conclusions. At the core of the improved framework is a two-phases model of the process through which actors build institutional capacity for industrial symbiosis. In the first phase, a common ground emerges between independent projects, that are started for disparate purposes, but are also potential building blocks for industrial symbiosis. The presence of bridging actors ensures that the emergent common ground is recognized and translated to a shared vision. With the development of the vision, the building blocks are assembled into a larger collaborative process. This triggers the second phase, in which the collaborative process unfolds as an assemblage of interrelated projects, aimed at the implementation of industrial symbiosis. The thesis also makes methodological contributions. Throughout the thesis, different methods, techniques and tools for longitudinal research are introduced as part of an innovative methodology called Event Sequence Analysis

Over de boeg van een akkoord

Dit essay beschrijft een praktijk van lokaal klimaatbeleid, waarin beleid in de vorm van een klimaatakkoord met ruim 100 partijen tot stand komt. In plaats van dat de gemeente beleid afkondigt, maken partijen dit samen. Werkt dat, hoe werkt dat en wat kunnen we ervan leren? We gingen op zoek naar de kracht van de aanpak en hoe partijen die kracht hebben gevonden. De volgende vraag was daarbij leidend: _‘Wat zijn de opbrengsten van de werkwijze rond het Rotterdams Klimaatakkoord, welke dilemma’s deden zich voor en welke lessen kan een initiërende gemeente (als Rotterdam) daaruit trekken?’

Once the shovel hits the ground : Evaluating the management of complex implementation processes of public-private partnership infrastructure projects with qualitative comparative analysis

Much attention is being paid to the planning of public-private partnership (PPP) infrastructure projects. The subsequent implementation phase – when the contract has been signed and the project ‘starts rolling’ – has received less attention. However, sound agreements and good intentions in project planning can easily fail in project implementation. Implementing PPP infrastructure projects is complex, but what does this complexity entail? How are projects managed, and how do public and private partners cooperate in implementation? What are effective management strategies to achieve satisfactory outcomes? This is the fi rst set of questions addressed in this thesis. Importantly, the complexity of PPP infrastructure development imposes requirements on the evaluation methods that can be applied for studying these questions. Evaluation methods that ignore complexity do not create a realistic understanding of PPP implementation processes, with the consequence that evaluations tell us little about what works and what does not, in which contexts, and why. This hampers learning from evaluations. What are the requirements for a complexity-informed evaluation method? And how does qualitative comparative analysis (QCA) meet these requirements? This is the second set of questions addressed in this thesis

Novel Indicators for the Quantification of Resilience in Critical Material Supply Chains, with a 2010 Rare Earth Crisis Case Study

We introduce several new resilience metrics for quantifying the resilience of critical material supply chains to disruptions and validate these metrics using the 2010 rare earth element (REE) crisis as a case study. Our method is a novel application of Event Sequence Analysis, supplemented with interviews of actors across the entire supply chain. We discuss resilience mechanisms in quantitative terms–time lags, response speeds, and maximum magnitudes–and in light of cultural differences between Japanese and European corporate practice. This quantification is crucial if resilience is ever to be taken into account in criticality assessments and a step toward determining supply and demand elasticities in the REE supply chain. We find that the REE system showed resilience mainly through substitution and increased non-Chinese primary production, with a distinct role for stockpiling. Overall, annual substitution rates reached 10% of total demand. Non-Chinese primary production ramped up at a speed of 4% of total market volume per year. The compound effect of these mechanisms was that recovery from the 2010 disruption took two years. The supply disruption did not nudge a system toward an appreciable degree of recycling. This finding has important implications for the circular economy concept, indicating that quite a long period of sustained material constraints will be necessary for a production-consumption system to naturally evolve toward a circular configuration

Studying the Evolution of the ‘Circular Economy’ Concept using Topic Modelling

Circular Economy has gained immense popularity for its perceived capacity to operationalise sustainable development. However, a comprehensive long-term understanding of the concept, characterising its evolution in academic literature, has not yet been provided. As a first step, we apply unsupervised topic models on academic articles to identify patterns in concept evolution. We generate topics using LDA, and investigate topic prevalence over time. We determine the optimal number of topics for the model (k) through coherence scorings and evaluate the topic model results by expert judgement. Specifying k as 20, we find topics in the literature focussing on resources, business models, process modelling, conceptual research and policies. We identify a shift in the research focus of contemporary literature, moving away from the Chinese predominance to a European perspective, along with a shift towards micro level interventions, e.g., circular design, business models, around 2014-2015.</p