Circular design as a key strategy to reduce embodied energy: An AI-powered tool to support material-related data exchange for a sustainable built environment

In the transition towards a more circular built environment at all levels of design, digital support tools are needed to ensure effective material-related data exchange and enable the reduction of embodied energy in both products and buildings.

In this process of change, multi-stakeholder digital platforms can play a key role in promoting the collaboration among the different players involved in the various supply chains, helping them tackle the main challenges, including rising energy and raw material costs and the need to ensure energy and resource efficient solutions.

The AI-powered digital tool resulting from the NPRR research project “From waste to manufacturing: digital tools to establish virtuous cycles” integrates a web platform for circular materials, which enables data exchange between designers, manufacturers and waste recyclers, with a CAD plugin that supports real-time sustainability assessment with the help of AI-enhanced features, focusing on the nexus between the recycled content in materials and the reduction of embodied energy.

AI, trained through scenario-based learning with stakeholder participation during platform use, can support designers in researching and sourcing recycled/reused materials, as well as in data processing. By continuing training, with the support of LCA experts, AI could interpret complex documents such as Environmental Product Declarations, extracting the information needed to guide design towards the selection of circular, low-embodied-energy materials and products, as increasingly required by international regulations.