Assessing the Role of Big Data and the Internet of Things on the Transition to Circular Economy: Part II

Research extracted the 150 most frequent words from the 226-article text corpus in order to verify and confirm that the resulting capabilities list is addressing the most relevant topics. The word cloud generated is shown in Figure 4.

Fig. 4.

Bigram, trigram and four-gram generation proved to be a valuable insight resource as some compound expressions not only appeared in the top 150 list, but also performed as an important validation tool for capabilities generation (for example ‘cloud computing’, ‘energy consumption’ and ‘smart sustainable city’), all key aspects of the validated capabilities list.

The top 20 expressions mapped are presented in Table III. The complete list of top 150 expressions is available in Appendix 4.

The words ‘product’, ‘service’, ‘urban’ and ‘city’ all appeared with high frequency, indicating initiatives for different industry types can benefit from big data and IoT, for example, and therefore influenced the framework development (i.e. specific treatment for industry type). The same analysis was made for each expression, performing essentially as a verification tool to ensure the framework and capabilities were consistent.

The first version of the resulting capabilities framework was submitted to a group of domain experts who provided useful insights into the study. Table IV shows the main contributions accepted from the domain experts. Typographic errors, rephrasing, use of synonyms and other small revisions are not listed.

The list of domain experts is presented in Appendix 2.

The final framework resulted in a set of 39 capabilities divided according to the six CE principles and presented in Figure 5 and Table V. It builds on both the ReSOLVE framework (5) and the six CE principles (4). The mapped capabilities were separated into application groups and industries, as some are considered technological tools, others new processes, some long-term projects and others punctual actions.

Fig. 5.

The mapping considering each capability and the corresponding block of the framework is presented in Figure 6. Capabilities not related to any industry are considered as applicable to any (cross industry).

Fig. 6.

The ReSOLVE Framework itself promotes a direct application of modern technologies on the elements ‘optimise’ (leverage big data and automation), ‘virtualise’ (dematerialisation) and ‘exchange’ (for example three-dimensional printing). With the establishment of the CE IT capabilities framework, not only can new applications be observed to those elements, but also it is now possible to notice that all elements of ReSOLVE can benefit from cutting-edge technologies. For example: the ‘regenerate’ element can be leveraged with net metering and the use of solar energy allows the use of IoT based devices in remote areas, like agricultural crops; the ‘share’ element benefits from smart connected devices monitoring equipment’s usage and providing predictive maintenance data and technology also connects users with similar interests allowing higher usage levels; in ‘optimise’, waste reduction can take many advantages from technology, varying from the use of AI and machine learning on product design to optimise resource consumption to application of green IT to increase product efficiency; ‘loop’ benefits from the use of AI to allow closing the loop on materials and to optimise waste collection and reverse logistics with IoT; ‘virtualise’ links directly with cloud computing and the home office; and ‘exchange’ may use technology on product design to promote shifting to renewable materials feedstock.

The scientific interest in applying modern technologies such as big data or IoT in the transition to CE is growing. Articles from 2017 and 2018 alone account for 66% of all the publications on the subject to date, reflecting what takes place in practice, given the number of cases and models identified – 60% of all articles mapped. Nevertheless, from the 21 different CE frameworks identified, only three mention IT as a component, and most of them refer to EMF as a primary CE reference, some built on EMF’s ReSOLVE framework. Therefore, IT scientists, scholars and practitioners still do not have at their disposal a framework to be followed that would allow a technological gaps assessment. This framework development was the article’s main purpose, which identified 39 IT capabilities necessary for organisations to consider themselves technologically circular.

The main scientific contribution of this study was the extension of the existing ReSOLVE framework to a level of detail that will allow IT professionals to assess their current CE gaps and plan their actions to enable an easier transition to CE. Additionally, the role modern technologies aligned with Industry 4.0 play in the organisational transition to CE was identified, and the status quo of related research around the world and the most interested institutions and publications were described.

In addition to the traditional literature review of 226 articles retrieved from Scopus^® and Web of Science^TM databases, the following triangulations were carried out to allow research confirmation and comprehensiveness: content analysis through statistical tool ‘R’, grey literature analysis and expert opinions. The capabilities were then divided according to the six CE principles presented in the literature: six for the design principle, 11 for reduction, 11 for reuse, seven for recycling, one for reclassification and three for renewable energies. The findings indicate that there are principles currently more susceptible to IT than others and that the public administration sector has attracted more research interest in the area possibly because of current initiatives fostered by government entities and agencies.

The following future research opportunities originate directly from this study: the conception of a scale with metrics to allow organisations to self-assess and benchmark (i.e. how many and which capabilities should an organisation implement and to what extent before it can be considered circular); and the confirmation of the framework’s performance by applying it in the form of a questionnaire or survey against selected organisations of different ports and industries.

The limitations of the study lie mainly in the volatility of recent modern technologies that may not have a long lifecycle, making the framework obsolete in the short term. In addition, since it is an essentially theoretical study based on published documentation, it still lacks practical confirmation through organisational case studies.