Indicators identification and assessment for industrial areas renewal supporting on industrial ecology

Abstract

Industrial areas degradation is a relevant problem for economic development, territorial planning and environment. Firm’s collocation is a common practice to occupy the empty plots and boost the degraded industrial areas. However, there is a lack of feasibility studies, which evaluates companies’ compatibility inside an existing industrial area. Supporting on Industrial Ecology theory and ICT tools, this contribution aims to analyze four groups of factors (environmental, economic, social and technical) which influence on companies’ relationships and the global industrial area performance, studying the operation inside a cooperative business scenario. The driving indicators related to firms’ compatibility and area improvement are drawn from factors’ assessment. Besides support the feasibility studies, the further work is to translate the driver factors as behavioural rules able to be implemented on computational support for the system modelling.