Impact of Transportation Costs on the Establishment of an Industrial Symbiosis Network

Abstract

The challenges related to natural resource depletion and environmental issues stimulate businesses to look for solutions to overcome them. One of the leading strategies that have emerged from the practical implementation of the circular economy concept is industrial symbiosis, which aims to reduce material extraction and consumption by using the waste (co-product) of one company as input for production processes of another company. This study aims to provide a more profound insight into industrial symbiosis (IS) modeling by considering the transport system impact. To this end, a hybrid approach based on agent-based modeling and system dynamics is presented to comprehensively capture the complexity of interactions between companies and their related impacts on transportation. A case study and numerical example are discussed to validate the proposed approach and related model. The results demonstrate that the development of IS, as expected, is significantly influenced by the transport system.