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Circular economy (CE) is an emergent concept that promotes resource circularity in multiple product systems. Modular construction (MC), an evolving construction technique, which includes an off-site manufacturing environment, increasingly supports CE strategies such as reuse due to the elevated potential for design for disassembly (DfD). Design-stage environmental assessments are paramount in aiding the early decision making of modular construction projects to successfully plan and implement DfD strategies. Research on synergising modular construction, circular economy and environmental sustainability is rare in developing economies. Thus, the current study aims to conduct a design-stage life cycle assessment of a DfD and linear versions of a modular building unit in Sri Lanka to evaluate the potential environmental benefits. The life cycle assessment results highlight that the DfD strategy has the lowest environmental impacts in all categories, with a 63% reduction in global warming potential and an approximately 90% reduction in terms of human toxicity compared to the linear version. Further, it showed the elevated potential of reuse compared to recycling practices in improving the environmental performance. Sensitivity assessment revealed that steel was the most sensitive to the change in reuse percentage among main building materials. The analysis outcomes highlight the importance of long-term thinking, architectural design creativity and industrial and technology development to uptake the CE-driven MC in the Sri Lankan context. Finally, strategies are proposed to support the CE approach in MC in developing regions. Both quantitative and qualitative outcomes provide a basis for construction industry stakeholders, academia, and policy makers to explore further and promote modular construction practices to enhance the circularity of building materials and components in developing regions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Off-site construction (OSC) methods have captured significant recognition during the last decade due to a range of benefits offered, from reduced construction time and cost to improved efficiency and environmental savings. OSC is proven to have enhanced performance in environmental issues such as waste generation and carbon emissions. However, even with well-documented benefits, by 2018, no major market has yet exceeded 20% of OSC penetration. Thus, identifying factors that advanced and enhanced the environmental performance of OSC from current research to understand the learnings and strategies is timely. A systematic literature review on the role of developed and developing economies in the environmental sustainability of off-site constructed buildings and identifying critical success factors (CSFs) is a novel research opportunity in the current literature. Thus, this research presents a systematic review of the environmental sustainability of OSC (ESOSC) with a clear focus on comparing OSC and its advancements in developed and developing countries. The research methodology involves a bibliometric analysis (BA) followed by an in-depth qualitative discussion. The BA identified key research trends, gaps, and governing countries in ESOSC research. The critical review has significantly focused on comparing the ESOSC studies in developed and developing countries to understand the differences, similarities, CSFs, and future opportunities. The outcomes of BA and critical discussion suggested that further research is required in the following topic areas: comprehensive sustainability assessments, smart/computerized technology integration, prefabrication rate-related research, integration of circular economy/sustainable development goals, and developing region-specific research. The theoretical value of the paper is in facilitating a solid basis for future investigations into the role of these economies in the triple bottom line of sustainability. The practical contribution of the study is to guide OSC stakeholders to increase the rate of OSC adoption and boost environmental performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As the world is moving into a sustainable era, achieving zero hunger has become one of the top three Sustainable Development Goals, applying a considerable amount of pressure on the agri-food systems to make decisions contemplating the sustainability dimensions. Accordingly, making effective supply chain decisions holistically while achieving sustainability goals has become a major challenge faced by the present agri-food systems. Thus, to address the challenge, a novel supply chain configuration addressing multiple supply chain decisions to reduce global warming potential (GWP) and post-harvest losses have been presented by taking the banana supply chain in Sri Lanka as a case study. In the proposed approach, farmers have been clustered based on their geo positions using K-Means clustering followed by route planning within clusters using a heuristics approach. Retailer points are catered by assigning to wholesalers optimally modeling as an assignment model and then route planning executed using a heuristic approach. The solution generated from the above approaches has been implemented on a simulation platform to calculate the overall supply chain performance including the transportation component, in terms of the net GWP, post-harvest losses, and lead time including routing operations. Simulated supply chain performance has been compared with the existing system and verified the performance of the proposed supply chain configuration. The suggested configuration has reduced the net GWP by 15.3%, post-harvest loss by 2.1%, lead time by 28.2%, and travel distance by 20.47%. The proposed configuration can be further improved by adding dynamic characteristics to the model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]