A Circular Construction Product Ontology for End-of-Life Decision-Making

TL;DR

The paper tackles the challenge of end-of-life decision-making for construction products amid heterogeneous data and silos by introducing the Circular Construction Product Ontology (CCPO). The authors combine OWL/RDF ontologies with SWRL-based rules to standardize vocabulary, aggregate product provenance across stakeholders, and automate EoL routing in compliance with EN15804, EC_PEF, and related circularity standards. A scenario-based methodology (Insulated Wall Panel) demonstrates data integration across the product lifecycle, while task-based evaluations show CCPO’s ability to produce accurate EoL recommendations via reusable, recyclable, or landfill pathways guided by health state ($P_H$), remaining service life metrics ($RSL$, $ASL$), and market demand. The contributions include a modular, provenance-aware ontology with a three-layer architecture, reusability with existing ontologies (PROV, BPO, CCO, DICBM, OPM), and demonstrable improvements over manual decision-making, signaling strong potential for scalable adoption in circular construction practice.

Abstract

Efficient management of end-of-life (EoL) products is critical for advancing circularity in supply chains, particularly within the construction industry where EoL strategies are hindered by heterogenous lifecycle data and data silos. Current tools like Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs) and Digital Product Passports (DPPs) are limited by their dependency on seamless data integration and interoperability which remain significant challenges. To address these, we present the Circular Construction Product Ontology (CCPO), an applied framework designed to overcome semantic and data heterogeneity challenges in EoL decision-making for construction products. CCPO standardises vocabulary and facilitates data integration across supply chain stakeholders enabling lifecycle assessments (LCA) and robust decision-making. By aggregating disparate data into a unified product provenance, CCPO enables automated EoL recommendations through customisable SWRL rules aligned with European standards and stakeholder-specific circularity SLAs, demonstrating its scalability and integration capabilities. The adopted circular product scenario depicts CCPO's application while competency question evaluations show its superior performance in generating accurate EoL suggestions highlighting its potential to greatly improve decision-making in circular supply chains and its applicability in real-world construction environments.

Figures (9)

• Figure 1: Product Lifecycle Phases
• Figure 2: EoL Handling Priority Hierarchy
• Figure 3: Development Approach
• Figure 4: Integrated EoL Decision-making Framework
• Figure 5: IWP Scenario