Communication in Design-for-Circularity: Requirements to a Knowledge Graph

Kurzfassung

In times of potential resource shortages and urgent need of a reduction in CO2 emission, reclaiming resources from end-of-life products becomes more and more relevant. This importance has already resulted in a growing number of legal regulations against the waste of resources and a strong push towards a circular economy. The design of a product has a strong influence on its environmental impact and its recyclability. In the project Methods andTechnologies for an intelligent Circularity of Materials (MaTiC-M), we aim to develop a Design-for-Circularity methodology which accounts for product recyclability right from the design phase. However, lack of information for both product developers and recyclers about the entire life cycle of a product impedes recycling-friendly designs and efficient recycling processes. Overcoming this obstacle requires the integration of a wide range of data from different sources. Our goal is to develop a knowledge graph to facilitate the exchange of information between product designers and recyclers. In a first step, we analysed the requirements of various stakeholders on such a knowledge graph. In this paper, we present our procedure for the requirements analysis, as well as the resulting catalogue of competency questions.