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A Framework for Pairing Circular Economy and IoT: IoT as an enabler of the Circular Economy circularity-by-design as an enabler for IoT (CE-IoT)

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - CE-IOT (A Framework for Pairing Circular Economy and IoT: IoT as an enabler of the Circular Economy circularity-by-design as an enabler for IoT (CE-IoT))

Reporting period: 2018-07-01 to 2020-06-30

Problem Statement

Design a CE-IoT framework, bi-dimensional and bi-directional in terms of circularity, aiming to
Develop novel circular economy business models and service supply chains to unlock CE-IoT synergies in regards to generating direct value for customers/end-users
Augment resource productivity across economies by forming new ecosystems that eliminate both negative externalities and the need for some resources altogether
Create an open, circular-by-design IoT architecture:
“Smart” IoT objects (e.g. sensors, devices, systems and components) are integrated in the IoT ecosystem through patterns with circularity-enabling properties (scalable connectivity, end-to-end security/privacy, dependability and interoperability)
Maximize IoT resource and data harvesting through a new breed of circular-by-design IoT ecosystems.

Project Objectives:

#1: IoT as a key enabler for the circular economy: establish a comprehensive framework with IoT as a key enabling and facilitating technology of the circular economy from a business perspective based on CE design patterns.
#2: Circularity as a key enabler for IoT technology: develop an open modular, circular-by-design IoT architecture based on IoT architectural design patterns.
#3: To integrate an overarching pattern-driven CE-IoT framework covering both business and technical aspects.
#4: To carry a comprehensive evaluation of the CE-IoT framework covering business, technical and legal aspects through two demonstrators in the domains of Internet Service Provisioning and Cloud services.
#5: To generalize the use of the CE-IoT framework by creating conditions for improving circular economy practice through IoT technology.
Reporting Period: 01/07/2018 - 30/06/2020
• WP1: Kick-off meeting was held 9-10 July 2018 in Heraklion, Greece.
• WP1: D1.1 - Project website and communication infrastructure, successfully delivered.
• WP1: 2nd Consortium meeting was held on 14 February 2019 in Brussels, Belgium.
• WP8: D8.1 - POPD - Requirement No. 1, as part of the ethics requirements that the project must comply with.
• WP8: D8.2 - POPD - Requirement No. 2, as part of the ethics requirements that the project must comply with.
• WP1: 3rd Consortium meeting was held on 11 April 2019 in Brussels, Belgium
• WP1: D1.2 - First Progress Report, successfully delivered.
• WP7: D7.1 - Exploitation, Innovation, Dissemination and Standardization Plan, successfully delivered.
• WP2: D2.1 - LCA and CSPDI patterns, successfully completed and delivered.
• WP1: 4th Consortium meeting was held on 27 February 2020 in Paris, France.
• WP1: D1.3 Mid-term meeting was held on 26 February 2020 in Paris, France.
• WP2: D2.2 - Business models for interplay of circular economy with IoT, successfully delivered.
• WP2: D2.3 - Circular economy supply chains enhanced by IoT, successfully delivered.
• WP2: D4.1 - The emerging intelligent assets landscape, successfully delivered.

Achieved Milestones:
• MS1: Creation and organization of the International Conference on Circular Economy and IoT.
• MS2: Definition of patterns, circular economy business models and supply chains.


• Total Secondments for this period: 90,8 person months.
Progress beyond the State of Art:
CE-IoT will advance the State-of-the-Art in two main areas:
(i) IoT as an enabler for circular economy, and
(ii) circularity-by-design as a technical architectural approach for developing IoT technologies.

- Algorithms will be created for for discovering, aggregating, and dynamically (re-) assigning physical resources to overlay virtual entities taking into account the context of the data and services that request access to those entities.
- An SDN architecture for efficient wireless interconnectivity of smart objects will be developed.
- SDN Orchestration in CE-IoT to interconnect networks with different QoS levels between different IoT domains will be performed. This will provide End to End (E2E) service connectivity between them and remote computational infrastructures (e.g. cloud, fog), meeting different IoT application requirements related to bandwidth, latency and energy efficiency.
- Introduce the deployment of Virtual Network Functions (VNFs) to remove complexity from Local and Access sensor networks, by moving the complex network functionalities (e.g. routing and network security).
- Provision of the NBI API for adaptable and dynamic networking services to client IoT applications.

CE-IoT adopts a pattern-based approach to guarantee circularity of IoT ecosystems through guarantee of CSPDI properties across horizontal and vertical compositional structures of IoT applications.
CSPDI patterns in CE-IoT define the overall design goal called “circularity by design” and will set necessary and sufficient conditions not only for composing different components within IoT applications in ways that guarantee CSPDI properties,
but also for ensuring that these properties are guaranteed also when IoT applications will use of the CE-IoT architecture in ways that guarantee such properties.
CE-IoT’s CSPDI patterns extend existing work on patterns (e.g. SSO patterns) by covering in an integrated manner not only security but also connectivity, dependability, privacy and interoperability properties covering the entire landscape of
circularity at IoT system level and extending patterns like the SSO ones, and focusing on IoT systems.


Expected Results:
CE-IoT will define
(i) IoT-enabled circular business model design with focus on exploring how companies can create new forms of value and achieve scale while transitioning to a circular business model
enabled by IoT technology (- exploring linkages between product and business model design),
(ii) the development of product service roadmaps by analysing organisational development in the transition from a product-focused to a service-focused business
model. Within this context the following actions are expected:
- Discovery of the substantial cultural, structural and strategic changes across the organisation during this transition.
- Identification of the organisational pathways and evaluating the experiences of product-service transitions to develop a guiding framework for organisational product-service transformation
(iii) digital strategies for product-service business models by analysing the role of digital resources as enablers of product-service business models.


Potential impacts:
Circular Economy as well as Internet of Things cut across and support every aspect of daily business, societal, and personal
activities, and – to this end – their interplay is of paramount importance. Circular business models and circular supply and delivery chains are
widely seen as a way on how business can create sustainable jobs and growth.The main societal benefits of CE-IoT relate to opportunities for:
(i) developing new and/or integrating IoT systems that can ease the everyday life of citizens in a sustainable fashion (e.g. transport,
energy, healthcare systems);
(ii) creating opportunities for cost effective and environmentally sustainable applications supporting societal, business and personal
activities and transforming related business and other processes
(iii) offer more responsive, adaptive and personalized support to societal, business and personal activities
(iv) raise public and business awareness regarding the necessity of sustainable economic growth
CE-IoT Kick-Off meeting in Herakleion, GR
CE-IoT@ NIS Summer School @ FORTH
CE-IoT particpating at the Privacy and Compliance Workshop @ Cablenet, CY
CE-IoT Twitter account
CE-IoT poster for dissemination at various events
CE-IoT@ Researchers Night @ FORTH