Datafication of the Circular Economy: designing a data exchange platform for upscaling the circular economy

Circular Economy (CE) bears the promise of a more efficient use of raw materials, and at the same time the creation of new jobs and economic activities. Current progress in CE is hampered by a lack of appropriate and accessible data to support policies and value chain interactions. Secure data governance is key to develop a comprehensive data exchange platform for promoting CE at the level of public and private actors. The project will bring together the CE- and the data economy-related scholarly discussions to elaborate a conceptual framework for data governance and for the establishment of a data exchange platform, based on the concept of “materials passport”, with focus on building and road mobility as cases. The notion of “(private) data of public interest” and a large spectrum of context-specific data governance regimes will be analyzed, as instruments to fairly regulate the complex interface between actors.

Keywords:circular economy, data governance, legal framework, materials, value chains

Disciplines:Materials recycling and valorisation, Life cycle engineering, Data collection and data estimation methodology, computer programs, Intellectual property law