Green Design Evaluation of Electrical and Electronic Equipment Based on Knowledge Graph

Green design aims to minimize possible environmental impacts of products at the design stage, which is a significant measure to address environmental concerns, especially for electrical and electronic equipment (EEE) containing various hazardous substances. Green design evaluation is increasingly needed for developing and comparing green design solutions. However, the existing studies on green design evaluation rarely cover all green design requirements, lack multidimensional analysis, and subjectively judge the importance of the green design index. This study applied knowledge graph (KG) to develop a green design evaluation method, with significant efforts in building a global EEE KG including green design requirements in standards, regulations, and certifications worldwide. We further employed a degree centrality algorithm to determine index weight, showing that toxic and harmful materials, energy efficiency and consumption, and environmental pollution have high weight values. Moreover, the green degree aggregating product performances in various aspects was developed to compare the green design levels of different street lamps in China, highlighting the great potential of technological advances for improving green design and the necessity of multidimensional analysis for identifying design hotspots. This study contributes to enhancing the efficiency, completeness, objectivity, and intelligence level of green design evaluation and provides a novel perspective for future research.