industrial by product MCA 2025

This study maps and evaluates industrial by‑products as reclaimed materials and building components (RMBs) for Means‑oriented Design (MoD), providing a practical method and local evidence base to support circular construction. Industrial by‑products represent a significant but underused resource for building design, yet a systematic, regulation‑aligned framework for assessing their suitability, safety, and performance for reuse in AECO‑FM remains limited. To address this gap, the study combines snowball sampling, Harvest Mapping, and a regulation‑anchored Multi‑Criteria Analysis (MCA) to evaluate 32 industrial by‑product streams within a close‑circuit region in northern Sweden.

Researchers visited seven companies, gathering detailed information on by‑products, their origins, and current handling practices. These data were consolidated into an inventory following the procedure below.

The MCA establishes a basis for weighing and scoring industrial by‑products suitable for reuse in building construction. Each criterion (i) receives a weight (Wi) from 1 to 4 reflecting its relevance to Sweden’s construction regulations (BBR), as shown in Table 1. Quantitative scoring incorporates mechanical and physical performance to reduce perceptual bias, using shared performance boundaries across materials.
Suitable materials receive higher scores (Ri). The combination of weights (Wi) and scores (Ri) yields a rating that identifies industrial by‑products with potential for reuse as RMBs. A linear additive weighted sum produces the suitability coefficient (Q), where each criterion has a normalized weight and a score based on reference values.

Q = Suitability coefficient; N = number of criteria; i = criterion; W = weighted score; R = material score.