Read MainstreamBIO’s methodology for matching available biomass and waste streams with market and technology information.
A simple, easy-to-use Decision Support System (DSS) has been developed to facilitate the identification of solutions that match available local biomass with suitable small-scale technologies to deliver biobased products that meet a certain market demand. The DSS should support farmers (either individuals or a cooperative group) and their advisors to take well-informed decisions. The DSS methodology consists of two steps (see Figure 1). The first step in the DSS guides the users through a matching process to find a specific small-scale biobased solution which is a combination of a certain feedstock with a certain technology to produce a certain product. In the second step of the DSS the users will make a personal multicriteria assessment of this specific small-scale biobased solution (the chosen match) compared to the current use. This assessment is based on a simple multi-criteria decision making (MCDM) model with different criteria in several categories (social, economic, and environmental) (Figure 2).
Figure 1: Schematic representation of the two steps of the DSS methodology.
All choices of the users in the DSS are supported by local information that they have already available, combined with information from the MainstreamBIO Toolkit, e.g., the various catalogues and the bioeconomy repository. The small-scale biobased technologies catalogue is essential for the matching process. Furthermore, feedstock and biobased product information is needed in the matching tool. Additional information can be found in the business models catalogue, the social innovations catalogue and the best practices on nutrient recycling catalogue. All this information is stored in separate tables in the MainstreamBIO Toolkit.
Figure 2: An example of the multi criteria spider diagram for the visual
representation of the assessment of a feedstock-technology-product match
Finally, it should be mentioned that the DSS methodology is designed to support the users to find matches and assess them (‘what do I need to take into account before making a decision on a certain match’). Thus, DSS methodology will supply suitable solutions to the users, and it will refer them to further information in the MainstreamBIO toolkit to assess these solutions.
More information can be found in Deliverable 2.4.
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