A four-quadrant conceptual framework for analyzing extended producer responsibility in offshore prefabrication construction

Abstract

Prefabrication has been widely advocated as a green production strategy to minimize the adverse environmental impacts of construction. Amid economic globalization, prefabricated construction materials are commonly sourced offsite and even offshore. As an issue emerging alongside offshore prefabrication, extended producer responsibility (EPR) is yet to be clearly identified, allocated, and implemented. This research develops a conceptual framework using a design thinking process, through which EPR associated with offshore prefabrication can be analyzed, agreed upon, and allocated. By considering the scope and scale of the responsibility and the procurement methods, the framework comprises four quadrants representing four typical scenarios for implementation of the EPR principle. It is applicable for both short-term and lifelong EPR analysis, in both traditional and integrated project delivery contexts. The framework will be particularly useful for devising public policies to achieve an onshore and offshore stakeholder win-win situation.

Extended Producer Responsibility in the Australian Construction Industry

“…Furthermore, the methods through which EPR policies are applied can vary. Several previous research studies have attempted to model these complex factors to boost the performance of EPR policies in practice [14]. This section of results focuses on a few of these models.…”

“…Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) is found to be a successful market-based policy approach that can significantly contribute to a circular economy in the construction industry. EPR has been applied to different waste types and streams [12,13] and is able to prepare the construction industry and the relevant C&D waste recovery sector to accommodate drastic changes that are inflicted by adverse incidents such as widespread pandemics, climate crisis, trade wars and natural hazards [9,14]. Technically, EPR renders manufacturers responsible (financially and/or physically) for the entire lifecycle of their products during the supply chain of materials [15], including design, manufacture, recycling and final disposal [16].…”

On Deploying Blockchain Technologies in Supply Chain Strategies and the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Systematic Literature Review and Research Outlook

“…With ten articles, visibility was also one of the most common BCT [5,20,[77][78][79][80][81][82][83][84]. Sixteen of the papers looked at the impact of both digitization and visibility on the SC and the COVID-19 pandemic simultaneously [5,23,[85][86][87][88][89][90][91][92][93][94][95][96][97][98]. While transparency technology has received little attention in prior research, and only one study has addressed this issue [99], the combination of visibility and transparency has been the subject of nine studies in the literature that was reviewed [98,[100][101][102][103][104][105][106][107].…”

“…China has been the subject of three studies [63,82,114]. The situation in Hong Kong is discussed in two articles [27,95]. The findings for these countries have been examined in certain papers, for example, one article on China and Hong Kong [84] and another on India and China [83].…”

Landscape change patterns at three stages of the construction and operation of the TGP

“…In recent decades, these changes have attracted extensive attention from experts and scholars around the world 9 – 12 . As especially frequent human activities, land inundation, flow manipulation, and fragmentation triggered by reservoir construction 13 have crucial environmental impacts: unavoidable crop production losses 14 , changes in hydrological conditions 15 , soil erosion 16 , increases in population and pollution inputs 17 , which ultimately lead to changes in landscape patterns. In the context of global climate change, dam construction and its ecological effects are complex, potential, spatial, cumulative, and unpredictable 18 .…”