Methodology for assessment and optimization of industrial eco-systems

There is an emerging trend in evaluating industrial activities using principles of industrial ecology because of the emphasis on sustainability initiatives by major process industries. Attention has also been targeted at developing planned industrial ecosystems (IEs) across the globe. We point out the current state-of-the art in this exciting discipline and subsequently identify the challenges that have not been encountered by the scientific community yet. Ecological Input Output Analysis (EIOA) may be considered as an "all-inclusive model" for the assessment of an IE because of its ability to capture the economic, environmental, and societal behavior of an IE. It could also be utilized to illustrate the detailed inter-relationships among the entities of an IE. Optimization of a fully integrated IE using conventional multi-objective optimization techniques would be too complex. For such multi-objective optimization problems, Hierarchical-Pareto optimization discussed in the literature has shown promise, but there is a need to establish a methodology to assess and/or improve the robustness of an IE using such techniques.