Improving waste and resource management entails working on interrelations between different material flows, territories and groups of actors. This calls for new decision support tools for translating the complex information on flows into accessible knowledge usable by stakeholders in the spatial planning process. This article describes an open source tool based on the geodesign approach, which links the co-creation of design proposals together with stakeholders, impact simulations informed by geographic contexts, systems thinking, and digital technology—the Geodesign Decision Support Environment. Though already used for strategic spatial planning, the potential of geodesign for waste management and recycling is yet to be explored. This article draws on empirical evidence from the pioneering application of the tool to promote spatially explicit circular economy strategies in the Amsterdam Metropolitan Area.
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REPAiR applies a geodesign approach to the field of waste and resource management. On that account, it aims to reveal both local and space-specific challenges of waste and resource management as well as integrated and place-based eco- innovative solutions for these challenges. In order to put this into practice, REPAiR combines Steinitz (2012) and Campagna (2014) concept of geodesign with the methodology of LifeCycle Assessments (LCA) and Living Labs (LL) and applies these to six case studies within the EU. As a reference to the peri-urban settlement structures of the six case study regions, the Living Labs, where the combined geodesign/LCA-approach will be used to discuss and co-design solutions and strategies to the specific challenges in waste and resource management, the Living Labs are called PULLs - for Peri-Urban Living Labs. As deliverable D 5.1 explains in more details, PULLs consist of a larger number of meetings, structured differently in terms of type and participants. A major component of each PULL is a series of workshops, in which regional public and private stakeholders from the field of waste and resource management are asked to participate in a co-designing process for solutions and strategies. Providing these stakeholders with a common platform of information and solution design options is the core task for a computerised interactive communication tool called Geodesign Decision Support Environment - or GDSE for short. Developing, testing and applying this GDSE is one of the pivotal elements of the REPAiR project. The GDSE will be available as an open source product once the project is finished.@en