Table of Contents

List of Figures v
List of Tables vii
Acknowledgements ix
1 Introduction 1
1.1 Motivation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
1.2 Sustainability and Information Technology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
1.3 Relation to Previous Work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
1.4 Research Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
I Theory and Philosophy 15
2 Information Management 17
2.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
2.2 Historical Background Leading up to Wikis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
2.3 Wikis from the inside . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
2.4 Incentives and Mechanisms for Participation in Wikis . . . . . . . . 29
2.5 Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
3 Industrial Ecology 2.0 35
3.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
3.2 Our Relationship with Information . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
3.3 Making the supply chain of data more eco-efficient . . . . . . . . . . 39
3.4 The Web and IE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
3.5 Towards Industrial Ecology 2.0 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52
3.6 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
4 Towards Next Generation Agent Based Models 61
4.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
4.2 Modeling Socio-Technical Systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
4.3 Improving the Use of Ontologies in ABM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64
4.4 Semantic Web Technologies for ABM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
4.5 Semantic Modeling Platform . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
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4.6 Semantic Modeling Paradigm . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77
4.7 Conclusions and Implications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78
5 Functional Requirements for Creating Evolving Knowledge
Infrastructures 81
5.1 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
5.2 Case Studies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83
5.3 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87
II Case Studies 89
6 Mobile Phone Recycling 91
6.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91
6.2 Modeling Approach . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92
6.3 Application to Case Study . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97
6.4 Evaluation of Functional Requirements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101
6.5 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102
7 Collaboratively Defining Industrial Symbiosis by means of a
Semantic Wiki 105
7.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105
7.2 Problem Statement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106
7.3 Methodology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107
7.4 Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112
7.5 Reflection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116
7.6 Evaluation of Functional Requirements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117
7.7 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 120
8 Enabling LCA with the Semantic Web 123
8.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123
8.2 Motivation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124
8.3 Greening Society and Information Technology . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126
8.4 Ecosystem of Software Tools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129
8.5 Examples of Managing Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137
8.6 Challenges and Guiding Principles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143
8.7 Evaluation of Functional Requirements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145
8.8 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149
9 Enipedia 151
9.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151
9.2 Motivations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 152
9.3 Existing Efforts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 154
9.4 Challenges and Implementation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 160
9.5 Insights . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 182
9.6 Future Directions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189
9.7 Evaluation of Functional Requirements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 192
9.8 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 196
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10 Conclusion and Reflection 199
10.1 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 199
10.2 Outlook . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 211
10.3 Reflection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 212
Bibliography 215
Summary 231
Samenvatting 237
Curriculum Vitae 245
NGInfra PhD thesis series on infrastructures 247

Abstract

The Web is radically changing the ways in which we can collectively compile, curate, filter and make sense of information. This holds promise for embracing complexity and truly informed decisions for sustainability in a connected world. In this book, Chris Davis reveals that there exists tremendous untapped potential of the Web, of Open Data, Open Standards and Open Source. He argues that more researchers need to become aware of and engaged with the new tools and possibilities the Web offers. He analyses how tools such as Wikis, the Semantic Web and Linked Open Data already facilitate some scientific communities. Thus, he explores our relationship with data and the philosophies behind the Web. Addressing the challenge of how to collect and liberate data for research on large-scale energy and industry systems, he extracts design requirements for an evolving knowledge infrastructure. These are used to create Enipedia.tudelft.nl, a Semantic Wiki for energy and industry data. This site already serves a growing community of researchers and professionals around the world in their analysis and modeling work. Read this thesis to understand how to get started with the Web technologies that are already changing the nature of research work.

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