Digital infrastructure for circularity

The construction and real estate sector accounts for a significant part of Sweden's climate impact and is one of the largest waste producers. Achieving the 2045 climate goals and the EU's goal of a climate-neutral construction sector requires a transition to circular material flows. A key challenge is the lack of digital infrastructure for traceability and reuse of materials throughout their entire life cycle. Data on the climate impact of materials, chemicals and recycling potential is often fragmented and difficult to access. This hinders effective reuse and trade in construction materials. The EU's regulation on the Digital Product Passport (DPP) makes it even more urgent to develop sector-specific digital solutions.

The project can potentially yield major benefits:

• Reduced climate impact
• More use of digitalization for reuse and circularity to create value More efficient processes for designers, developers and municipalities.
• Improved competitiveness for Swedish companies when the EU's DPP becomes mandatory.
• Stronger collaboration between actors and sectors through interoperable data structures and connections to

Problem statement

The construction industry in Sweden generated 14.3 million tons of construction and demolition waste in 2020, of which not even one thousandth was reused. To reduce climate impact and increase circularity, the sector needs to develop digital infrastructures that support reuse and circularity. It is also important to identify new business models and solutions for logistics, product labelling and material valuation.

Purpose

The project aims to support the construction and real estate sector's transition to circular material flows by building and implementing a digital infrastructure for building materials. This involves developing an industry-specific and interoperable infrastructure for reuse, as well as developing requirements for common ontologies and a national data infrastructure. The goal is to enable practical implementation of circular construction on a large scale and create new business models.

Impact objectives

• Increased reuse through digitalization and industrial processes
• Increased share of business models based on reuse and circularity
• Reduction of climate impact throughout the entire life cycle of the construction work
• Strengthened competitiveness of Swedish companies through adaptation to the EU's DPP
• Improved collaboration between actors and sectors through interoperable data structures

Outcome objectives

• Proposals for necessary data for DPP that support circular construction
• Requirements for digital infrastructure and common ontologies for building materials
• Ensure that the right data is available at the right time in the design process to support reuse
• Link the project to the EU's CIRPASS project and develop a common ontology for the construction sector
• The project is divided into two phases, where goals and activities in phase 2 depend on the data prepared in the previous phase.

Phase 1: Results and continued management

The expected results from Phase 1 are:

• a mapping of obstacles and needs
• a mapping of ongoing initiatives and knowledge
• a prototype sketch of what a digital infrastructure could look like
• a project description for phase 2

For the project as a whole, the expected result is a framework for a national common and interoperable digital infrastructure for materials and products that supports the transition to a circular sector.

The infrastructure is described and anchored with the sector's stakeholders, but more work will most likely be required to develop and implement it.

The infrastructure includes, among other things, ontologies for material descriptions, data structures for trading platforms for building materials, and developed data sets and structures on digital product passports for the civil engineering sector.

An expected result for the project is increased synergy between already established and ongoing initiatives linked to recycling and circularity, and increased opportunities for circular value creation and business.