Data and Systems-Mapping for Circular Cities

Circular Economy movement provides an opportunity to deal with the unprecedented material consumption and solid waste generation in cities. Concerted efforts for circularity of materials, (by-) products and end-of-life outflows from urban systems, however, require data-driven understanding of urban metabolism as well as the stakeholders to help improve the circularity performance. Access to location and time-specific circular economy data can help policy makers, industries and citizens to identify state of circularity in cities and benchmark progress against specific targets and/or cities. For a comparative set of data across cities, a data framework needs to be developed which can be adopted by city authorities and local governments. However, there are several challenges in developing such a data system. Given the enormous contribution of the informal waste actors to circular economy in African cities, it is important to understand the scope of both formal and informal stakeholders in resource circularity and how that could be differentiated in a data framework. Additional challenges include need for appropriate infrastructure, budgets for data accounting and capacity development for data capturing.
To understand the state of urban data related to circular economy, this study investigates cities across Nigeria, Tanzania, Pakistan and Bangladesh. It develops case-specific understanding of data availability, data collection mechanism, its quality and coverage. Based on the stakeholders and the state of data, this study proposes actionable steps for creating a circular economy data framework for local governments and city authorities. Overall, this study argues for refined data collection and management mechanisms to ensure accessible and comparable waste and circularity data across African (and Asian) cities. Results are part of an ongoing cross-country research collaboration, under UK Royal Academy of Engineering Frontiers Program, to help achieve efficient resource use and emission reduction in developing countries.