Systemic Design for Circular-City Digital-Assessment Tools. Proposal of an integrative framework for the evaluation of circularity within public utilities. The case study of Circunet.

Public infrastructure is still lacking a unified and complete methodology for assessing strategies and actions towards sustainability that take into consideration urban complexity. There is a need for tools and frameworks that facilitate the decision making and identification of strategies, for actions that fulfill sustainable supply and demand of public infrastructure systems, without losing sight of their uniqueness. One of the most relevant approaches towards sustainability of public infrastructure is the shift of its consumption models from linear to circular based. Sis.Ter® proposes a tool called Circunet for supporting and evaluating this shift. This thesis work evaluates the efficacy of Circunet for achieving this intended matter; it demonstrates the importance of a systemic design vision as a methodological tool for the evaluation and support of the transition of public infrastructure towards circular economy models. As a result, this thesis proposes a new methodological framework for Circunet to evaluate and support this transition in a holistic manner, capable of understanding and taking advantage of urban complexity. The framework understands the uniqueness of each urban infrastructure and offers indicator pathways that support the identification of causes and consequences of circular practices, opening the doors for the creation of precise strategies and decision making for the shift towards circularity.