A Literature Survey of Information Systems Facilitating the Identification of Industrial Symbiosis

Abstract

Industrial Symbiosis (IS) is an emerging business tool that is used by practitioners to engage cooperation among industries to reuse waste streams. The key to reveal IS opportunities for organizations is both connecting the supply and demand of various industries and providing technical knowledge on the IS implementation. This process is increasingly supported by information systems which act as a facilitator of communication and distributor of knowledge. However, we lack understanding of a describing role of each type of information system within the process of IS identification. IS literature could benefit from a clear overview of (i) the characteristics of these different information systems, (ii) the role of support these systems provide, and (iii) the technologies used to enable such identification. This paper analyzes the current state of literature that addresses information systems that facilitate IS identification and studies these systems using these three pillars. Our study contributes by providing a classification framework of information systems that facilitate industrial symbiosis identification and reveals three research directions to progress IS identification tools, namely (i) software product and service development (ii) data integration, and (iii) adoption of intelligent learning.