Topic C.1: Data formats for a machine-readable description of renewable resources and their semi-finished products with a specific focus on their variable material properties

Standardized data formats for describing commodities form the basis for interorganizational transaction processing’s automation in e-business to, for example, automatically examine the emergence of residue material in value-generating networks. Commodity taxonomies standards were developed more than ten years ago and used in some systems (Hepp et al., 2007). To date, however, neither renewable resources’ essential properties, nor their specifics have been depicted. Here, research focuses on systematically describing standardized commodities. The mapping of intrinsic material variabilities in networks for renewable resources’ industrial use has, until now, hardly been researched.

Data formats for a machine-readable description of renewable resources and their semi-finished products are researched within this topic area. The objective is to design a data description system to support the interorganizational transactions processes. The purpose is to examine, on the basis of available approaches to taxonomies and ontologies, how variable commodity properties could be encapsulated in markup languages. First, the research could build on preliminary studies on domain-specific taxonomy systems and, second, could build on current research on the use of ontologies to form the basis of a commodity classification system (Hepp, 2006; Guo, 2009; Nowakowski, Stuckenschmidt, 2010; Rapp et al., 2010). Specifications such as OWL (Web Ontology Language) are, for example, explored for their suitability as the basis for product catalogs enabling the automated matching of supply and demand on electronic trading platforms. Similar mechanisms are used for raw materials, residue materials and by-products, which thus consider numerous variable product characteristics.

A requirement analysis – by means of literature studies and own qualitative surveys – should first be performed to determine the data flow procedure and methodology. Preliminary studies from topic group A on the researched materials’ characterization could also be included (see topics A.2, A.3 and A.4). The system’ concept and evaluation (reference modeling and prototyping) could be based on these preliminary studies.