Regional industrial symbiosis: A review based on social network analysis

In order to achieve more effective and inclusive environmental and economic benefits, local industrial symbiosis programs need to be expanded to a regional scale. Research on regional industrial symbiosis (RIS) covers technical and non-technical aspects that have not yet been studied in detail. The goal of this paper is to identify the main topics and trends in this field of research. After proofreading of 956 Scopus-indexed documents extracted by keyword-search, 112 papers were selected as the core literature for the quantitative review. The sample represents a 22-year period (1997-2019), with over 63% of the articles published since 2015. The majority of case studies (64%) took place in Europe, China, the USA, and Australia. By applying social network analysis (SNA), keyword co-occurrence relations were investigated in the Gephi environment for distinguishing the main topics. The visualized network has a core-periphery structure. Six main subtopics were detected: industrial symbiosis and regional learning, waste minimization assessments, urban industrial symbiosis (UIS) and life cycle thinking, energy efficiency, operational carriers, and social aspects. Further document clustering demonstrated the division of papers in two groups representing differences in the geographical distribution of case studies, resources to be exchanged, and the organization of networks. The evolution of the sample in recent years was also examined, and its leading edges and weaker dimensions were identified. Additionally, a detailed content review is provided, which led to the mapping of main achievements and software tools under each subtopic. (C) 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.