deliverable d.t4.2.2 definitions of functionalities of the ......(c2c) consumer to consumer: in this...

GREENCYCLE

Introducing circular economy system to Alpine Space

to achieve low-carbon targets

ASP 453 – Priority 2 Low Carbon Alpine Space

Deliverable D.T4.2.2

Definitions of functionalities of the platform

December 2020

version 2 - by Trentino Digitale Spa

Program priority: Priority 2 – Low Carbon Alpine Space

Work package: T4 – Establishment of transnational circular economy marketplace

Activity: A.T4.1 Building transnational circular economy marketplace platform

Deliverable: D.T4.2.1 Definition of the functionalities of the platform

Table of content

ASP 452 GREENCYCLE D.T4.2.1 Definition of the functionalities of the platform

1. Introduction 3

1.1 Introduction 3

1.2 Objective of the deliverable 4

2. General Requirements 6

2.1 A Continuous Development Process 6

2.2 Micro services design 8

2.3 Required Hosting/Capacity 9

2.4 Functionalities 9

2.5 Target audience 10

3. Functional Analysis 12

3.1 Navigation and browsing 12

3.2 Visitor Interaction and site map 14

3.3 The Frontend: Styling and Design 16

3.3.1 Pages design 16

3.3.2 Home page 17

3.3.3 User Registration 19

3.3.4 Storefronts 19

3.3.5 Trust and Reputation 19

3.3.6 Marketing Social 20

3.3.7 CE Manifesto 20

3.3.8 Transnational Network 20

3.4 The Backend: Editing, Updates and Administration 21

3.4.1 Functionalities for CE Manager 21

3.4.2 Functionalities for User of Companies 22

3.4.3 Functionalities for User of Reuse Centres 24

3.4.4 Functionalities for Citizen 25

3.4.5 Functionalities for Administrators and Content Editors 25

3.4.6 Tracking 26

3.4.7 Booking and Events Calendar 26

3.5 The IA and Data Layer design 27

3.6 The Data Connector: automated loading and downloading data 30

4. Hosting and Technical specifications 31

5. Other Requirements 32


1. Introduction

1.1 GREENCYCLE Context

One of the most important objective of the GREENCYCLE project is establishing a Transnational

circular economy network starting from the appointment of 5 city’s Circular Economy Managers in 5

ALPINE SPACE cities, that are: Freiburg, Maribor, Vorau, Vienne-Condrieu Agglomeration and Trento,

plus optionally Lichtenstein, focusing strongly on the side of the Public Administration, trying to

unlock the CE innovation potential of the Public Administration. The appointed public administration

personnel is most of the cases pooled from existing municipal experts staff, from staff working in

related fields (like environment, waste, energy, transport and others). This personnel is appointed

and assigned with an additional assignments in order to establish a transnational circular economy

network between the cities involved in the project, with the potential and the aim to enlarge the

network to other ALPINE SPACE cities. The principle beneath the transnational network, is that

resource productivity and waste recovery indicators show that cities and regions involved in the

GREENCYCLE project are above the European average on sustainability and economical circularities,

often beyond the targets and actions plans set by most of national waste management and circular

economy plans. This is mainly because in these cities, in the past, there has been some remarkable

improvements and tangible initiatives that had and still have great impacts.

Beside this, the introduction of digital technologies is facilitating the transformation of numerous

social structures, processes, and institutions even if digital transformation requires runs over longer

periods of time. Digital platforms are a virtual interface between companies and customers, but also

partners, stakeholders and there are aiming to gather benefits from the interactions of the users,

leveraging on the network effects principle. The more people active on the platform, the greater the

benefit for all participants.

A unique feature of digital platforms is the direct exchange of data across the platform itself. Among

the digital platforms in the B2C include marketplaces, search engines, and social networks, and the

B2B digital platforms, driven by the Internet of Things. At the same time, information is the

foundation and driver of digital platforms to provide additional services to their customers.


1.2 Objective of the deliverable

This document aims to help define a common vision about the specific digital platform build by the

GREENCYCLE project, the Circular Economy Marketplace, and the requirements and functionalities

that is going to provide.

A marketplace is a site or an online platform (internet) that allows you to make purchases of products

or services. It connects Producer and Consumers through the Internet and thereby fosters efficiency

in an otherwise inefficient market. A Marketplace is an ecommerce platform that enables Individuals

as well as Business to either list their items for sale or set up online storefronts on the marketplace

platform and leverage the platform and its services [search, viewing product information, buying,

payment, order management, etc]. It can be considered horizontal when they support the exchange

of various types of products or services, or vertical, when the platform allows the exchange of only

one type of product.

Marketplace also can act as a guarantor in the transaction between sellers and buyers, as long as the

duration of the commercial operation. In particular, it pays attention to the registration of operators

(sellers / buyers) by applying anti-fraud controls and rules.

Types of subjects involved in the exchange are categorized as:

(C2C) Consumer to Consumer: In this case, transactions occur directly between individuals

(B2C) Business to Consumer: The typical model in this case is electronic commerce where

companies directly expose products and services to private individuals

(B2B) Business to Business: In this case, this is a business-to-business deal.

The marketplace offers and must guarantee:

Strong visibility quickly: it must interfere with search engines,

Reduced marketing costs: Marketplace sharing allows you to market your products. Costs are

also often due to a transaction without a registration fee

Simplicity of use

Unpublished products / services

Reaching niche markets

Production of useful statistics through the processing of transaction data, demand and supply


Many sharing economy platforms are in fact peer to peer marketplaces. Also called "switch"

marketplaces, sharing economy platforms' users will characteristically switch between buying and

selling services or goods, such as on AirBNB or UBER. From a buyer's perspective, he/she gets to

choose from multiple sellers and therefore can pick & choose / bargain hunt as required.

Because of the larger number of sellers in a marketplace, the consumer gets the benefit of greater

choice in inventory and also because of the inherent competition between sellers selling similar

products, the buyer also gets the benefit of lower prices and better customer service. The seller

primarily needs to focus on sourcing, listing his inventory, managing orders and fulfillment and

customer support. The marketplace platform takes care of the Technology infrastructure, payment

processing, managing fraud & risk etc.

During analysis of Marketplace became evident that platform can’t be only a marketplace for

exchanging material but its use, from CE Manager, will be as a tool for analyze and supervise CE

practices in local region and between municipalities and a better name of the digital platform has

been defined in “GREENCYCLE Resource Marketplace Platform” (GRMP).

GREENCYCLE Resource Marketplace Platform will be the main transnational tool for practical

implementation of circular economy. It will establish transnational cooperation in the fields, where it

is needed due to big-scale approach. For example when recycling electronic waste some materials

(tantalum, iridium, cobalt…) can be feasibly recycled only if larger quantities are gathered.

Main goals for GREENCYCLE Resource Marketplace Platform are:

initial assessment,

reduce material use,

recycling of waste into secondary material,

quality/quantity of material reuse,

increased energy efficiency from shorter supply loops (optimised transport routes),

heat recovery from industrial processes.


2. General Requirements

This chapter contains the general characteristics that the platform must guarantee. The platform is

created to be used by a large and heterogeneous group of users. Potential may be accessible by a

large number of users, free, available at all times (normal features for a website) and will be

recognizable through its own domain.

2.1 A Continuous Development Process

Development of GREENCYCLE Resource Marketplace platform can’t be considered as a single stop.

First release of the platform will certainly start new requests for development to better respond to

requests from users. Furthermore, a fundamental aspect will be the management of contents (both

loading and use) by the CE managers of the municipalities.

Figure 1 the SDLC process- Image from synotive.com

Software life cycle models describe phases of the software cycle and the order in which those phases

are executed. Each phase produces deliverables required by the next phase in the life cycle.


Requirements are translated into design. Code is produced according to the design which is called

development phase. After coding and development the testing verifies the deliverable of the

implementation phase against requirements.

Another important aspect to consider will be that the platform will have to be maintained for at least

5 years. Development plans to use resources with low maintenance costs, but it will not be possible

to eliminate all costs (for example, the annual cost of the server, any adjustments to new middleware

versions, etc.). To enable the platform adoption of interoperate in a more standard way between

GREENCYCLE partners, project bases on SCHEMA.ORG1 for the identification, modeling and

construction of the information architecture elements that are impacting the UX and the API for

application interoperability of the digital platform.

Figure 2 schema.org is providing basis for information architecture modeling

SCHEMA.ORG was funded by Google, Microsoft, Yahoo and Yandex, Schema.org vocabularies are

developed by an open community process. It is a collaborative, community activity with a mission to

create, maintain, and promote schemas for structured data on the Internet, on web pages, in email

messages, and beyond. Vocabulary can be used with many different encodings, including RDFa,

Microdata and JSON-LD. These vocabularies cover entities, relationships between entities and

actions, and can easily be extended through a well-documented extension model. Over 10 million

sites use Schema.org to markup their web pages and email messages. Many applications from

Google, Microsoft, Pinterest, Yandex and others already use these vocabularies to power rich,

extensible experiences.

1 https://www.schema.org


2.2 Micro services design

GREENCYCLE Resource Marketplace Platform will be design and developed with a micro services

approach and with an API-Driven approach.

.

Figure 3 – A microservice architecture is made by building blocks

In that way data published and stored in database can be easily exported using simple API tools

without writing code. At the same time some data could be loaded using specific API to automate

periodic uploads.

The micro services model is going through some basic step of analysis:

identification of an investigator ( communication, start-up, constant feedback, local news ...)

analysis of current methods of providing the specific service to 10 other stakeholders

periodic comparison with the referents of the experimental bodies in the design and

implementation phase through the definition of evaluation metrics and with a selected group

of citizens

And it is pushing strongly a citizen-centric vision of services

opportunities for citizen involvement (collaboration in the continuous improvement of the

service, reports of malfunctions, content creation, ...)

transparency towards the citizen and fellow citizens

monitoring of the process completion times (true for individuals and for all citizens)


2.3 Required Hosting/Capacity

Some requirements about Hosting and infrastructural capacity:

Up to 100,000 users

Unlimited traffic, listings & images

No transaction fees*

Support 7 days a week (24x7) Always on

No hosting branding

Use own domain WWW.MARKETPLACE.GREENCYCLE.SI (during development will be

www.GREENCYCLE.it)

Use own outgoing email address

Language base English but must provide support for multilanguage

2.4 Functionalities

This list of digital platform basic functionalities (not exhaustive). In the next chapters the required

characteristics will be analyzed in detail:

Supporting different marketplace types: buying, selling, exchange

Event Calendar

Browsing: Profiles and Storefronts

Listings

Mobile friendly: Language and Currency

Access Control

Possibility to change logos, cover photos, colour themes, and a custom domain, possible

adding custom CSS to make the marketplace match the look & feel for a specific brand.

Trust and Reputation: Allowing people to write reviews after each transaction

Marketing Social: Facebook Connect to get more signups. Allow people to easily share on

Facebook & Twitter

Services that should be implemented for the platform users should be (draft list):

http://www.marketplace.greencycle.si/

http://www.greencycle.it/


Search for Recycling Points/SME/Other "CE-Enabler" closest to you by entering your zip code

or selecting the city/area that interests you (green economy points).

Search available craftsmen specialized in extending the life of used manufactured products

(recovery, maintenance, lifetime extension) (blue economy points).

Buy/Sell in the nearer range and the best market price the following materials (minimum list):

Plastic - PE - PVC - Paper - Cardboard - Aluminium - Copper.

Search and provide information for contacting the closest recycling point in which Users can

recover/exchange/expose materials (iron / steel / deleted / stoves / other stuffs cumbersome

to recycle).

Post ads to sell or find secondary raw materials, equipment and recycling vehicles, recycling

shops, collection centres for sale, and similar.

2.5 Target audience

GREENCYCLE Resource Marketplace Platform could have many potential keys audience with different

types of interest.

We have described this potential audience with the descriptive technique of the personas (enclosed

sheets).

Below we summarize the types of potential visitors:

Free visitors - people who are interested in knowing the activities related to the circular

economy, looking for places to collect waste material, points of exchange of materials and

objects of reuse, analysis concerning their territory, locate associations related to the circular

economy, become aware of events, make contact with the CE managers of the municipalities

and so on

User Registered – people who are interest in knowing details about offers or research of

materials and reusable object, managing companies or municipalities account and so on

Municipalities users - people who manage accounts of Municipalities that join GREENCYCLE

Resource Marketplace Platform. They can create municipalities events, announcements,

people who manage accounts of companies that join GREENCYCLE Resource Marketplace

Platform, manage dataset loaded, news and newsletter.


Municipalities Admins - this persons can create, modify, suspend and delete account of

Municipalities. They can also create account for companies or suspend accounts of companies

due to incorrect use of the platform or by request from the company

Companies users – people who manage accounts of companies o reuse centre that join

GREENCYCLE Resource Marketplace Platform. They can post offers or reply to research of

material, change some data of companies and so on

Companies Admins – this persons can create, modify, suspend and delete account of

companies. They can also give or revoke permission for companies to other users creating

Companies users or Admin, too

Other platforms or web sites - some data managed in the platform will be available using

dedicated web services


3. Functional Analysis

3.1 Navigation and browsing

The GREENCYCLE Resource Marketplace Platform will be the third part, interactive and opened to the

user experiences, of the GREENCYCLE web environment.

The digital platform is web based, multi device and with a reactive UX

The main site of GREENCYCLE Project can be reached at the address WWW.GREENCYCLE.SI. Site

includes all components developed during project GREENCYCLE, “Projects”, “Goals”, “International

Cooperation”, “Partners” and in “”Important file & tools” there are three sections.

The knowledge Platform – The knowledge platform will be used to improve awareness about circular

economy (WPC) on one side and as a knowledge basis for implementation of other technical WPs:

WPT2 (inputs for action plans), WPT3 (inputs for toolboxes), WPT4 (inputs for platform).

The ToolBox - The CE Toolbox will enable planning, management and monitoring of circular economy

processes. It will be in the form of E-tool and will be tested in local pilots.

The GREENCYCLE Resource Marketplace Platform (previous called Marketplace)

Figure 4 – The knowledge base web site

http://www.greencycle.si/


GREENCYCLE Resource Marketplace Platform is addresses on a specific server and has a own address

that is developed at the address www.GREENCYCLE.it, and that will be online at the address

www.marketplace.GREENCYCLE.si and sub linked from the main web site (www.GREENCYCLE.si).

This platform will not be a simple site but a real resource manager used by CE Manager of

municipalities, to analyze CE status in local environment, by companies to find other companies

interested in CE activities, by citizens to know to learn more about the territory inhabited, the best

practices of circular economy, where and how to dispose of giving new life to their waste and

obsolete objects.

Figure 5 – The main navigation of the GRMP

http://www.greencycle.it/

http://www.marketplace.greencycle.si/



Figure 6 – The 3-layer schema

3.2 Visitor Interaction and site map

Visitors can access to a Landing Page of GREENCYCLE Marketplace directly or the or thought specific

section on www.greencycle.si. Login is not mandatory for navigation on GREENCYCLE Resource

Marketplace Platform. From home page you can access to resource map, displaying resource

situation about municipality you choose, you can search for materials, object, companies or other

items. But some detail about you research you can display only after login (like correct place of

stocking, quantity, etc.).

After login you can choose the profile with which to operate, if you have more than one (citizen

registered, municipality users, companies admin , etc.)



Figure 7 – The navigation schema


3.3 The Frontend: Styling and Design

Style of the platform refers to the aspect used in the development of the GREENCYCLE.si website, like

in following image.

Figure 8 – The Knowledge base site style

3.3.1 Pages design

On the top we can find project logo, localization and link contacts.

Figure 8 – The header detail

On the page footer we can find other information on a section green background: project logo, links

to Alpine Space, Partner logo and links, box for subscribing newsletter and so long.

All information contained in the platform will be summarized in the various layers displayed on the

main map. Changing the depth of vision or choosing different layers, the visitor can go in and browse

the data.


3.3.2 Home page

Home page allows you to search the data contained in the platform. The research is free and the

result presents generic references. Users can look up detail of materials, objects or services only after

login.

Figure 9 – The interaction process with the PA

In this example we can see how a high-level layer can indicate on the map the geographical position

of the various project partners.


Figure 10 – The MVP developed in early stage to define the platform UX

Zooming on the map you can discover the local resources mapped manually or automatically by the

various partners You can see details clicking on icons.

Figure 11 – The zooming function


3.3.3 User Registration

User registration process allows to citizen to create an own account, also using FB or Google

authentication. Minimum personal data will be requested. It will be required a mail validation to

active account. After registration all functionalities will be available.

Figure 12 – The registration process

3.3.4 Storefronts

Information user upload in their profile (logo, description, locations, photos, videos, materials, object

an so long) will display in “storefronts”. This will be the business card for company.

3.3.5 Trust and Reputation

Every user, not registered too, could give own reputations and ranking for user registered and

materials/objects on the platform.


Rankings and comments could be moderated or directly published, but, in this case, the admin user

or municipality user will delete any not appropriated comment.

3.3.6 Marketing Social

New user can use its own Facebook o Twitter login to register itself.

Moreover allow people to easily share on Facebook & Twitter, for company, offers and so long, will

help dissemination about GREENCYCLE Project.

3.3.7 CE Manifesto

On GREENCYCLE Resource Marketplace everyone can read and sign the Circular Economy Manifesto.

You can download the flyer for collections of signs.

The registration must include the signature on the manifesto by default.

3.3.8 Transnational Network

GREENCYCLE Resource Marketplace give all data available about the transnational network created

by the GREENCYCLE project between municipality and composed by CE managers .

unregistered users can learn about CE managers, which municipality agree the network, information

about circular economy an most important navigate in through transnational data about waste,

recyvling, reuse and so long.


3.4 The Backend: Editing, Updates and Administration

Backend platform allows the management of content from different types of roles.

3.4.1 Functionalities for CE Manager

CE Manager and his delegates can update information about Municipalities: descriptions, roles in

administration and local government, locations, block accounts that do not use the platform

properly, helping in creating new accounts for non-expert users and so long.

Ce Manager supervise exchanges between users, using data of platform. Ce Manager will be able to

advise users about incorrect use of platform and eventually suspend accounts.

Figure 13 – The publishing of materials data process

CE Manager can upload data about local resource management using uploading page.


Moreover backend functionalities help Ce manager in reading, aggregate and analyze data. All data in

platform are showed on a web dashboard.

Figure 14 – A PoC of the CE Manager Dashboard

3.4.2 Functionalities for User of Companies

User of companies can update information about companies, such as description, point of contacts,

locations, photos, video and so long.

Specific functionalities allow companies in publishing offers and research of materials, objects and

services and accept/deny booking for material or objects.. Page for publishing materials allow to load

descriptions, photos , videos, quantity, details, location of materials, data of delayed publication and

so long.

Company users can research materials, look at their details, propose withdrawal or booking.

Users can evaluate users and exchange. Ratings will be published on the user's page and visible to all

visitors to the platform.


Logged companies can access to offer/request detail and book materials or objects. Marketplace

registers the reservations completed successfully or not, in order to rate users.

Figure 15 – An early prototype of the company profile management on the platform

An example for exchanging is describe in next image.

Figure 16 – the exchange of material process


Main information to be requested during registration are:

NAME

Description (brief and extended)

logo

NACE CODE, using official European code

Reference Municipality

Type of organization

GEO location

Contact (contact persone, mail, website,... )

Waste management hierarchy (Prevention, reuse, recycling, recovery, disposal)

3.4.3 Functionalities for User of Reuse Centres

User of reuse centres has the same functionalities offered to a company user. A specific functions

developed for this special kind of use of platform will be:

the print of an object label

a simplified system for managing a warehouse (loading and unloading objects)

list of object in store

list of object exchanged

accept/deny booking for objects.


Figure 17 – the process involved in the re-use center

3.4.4 Functionalities for Citizen

User citizen can update some brief information about himself, such as name and surname, mail and

other non-mandatory information like locations, photos, video and so long.

Registered citizen can access to offer/request detail and book materials or objects. Marketplace

registers the reservations completed successfully or not, in order to rate users.

3.4.5 Functionalities for Administrators and Content Editors

Administrators functionalities are part of digital platform (that is powered by a open source Content

Management Engine). User can edit workflow, insert translations, move and delete content items

and so long.


3.4.6 Tracking

GREENCYCLE Resource Marketplace Platform could be based on block chain platform. The block

chain-based marketplace removes intermediaries, all transactions are traceable on a public ledger,

demonstrating a high level of security and transparency. In addition, block chain technology involves

smart contracts – digitally signed agreements made via distributed computing platforms like

Ethereum. Smart contracts are stored publicly, preventing fraud.

The platform is planning to use block chain technology as soon as a reliable implementation of this

technology, in public web (permission less) is available.

3.4.7 Booking and Events Calendar

These features could help user in making exchanges. Booking an exchange will increase trust

between users.

With Events Calendar users could create own events and promote them, or create events managed

by other subjects.

Figure 18 – the opendata events publishing process for digital services


3.5 The IA and Data Layer design

Information architecture (IA) is the structural design of shared information environments; the art and

science of organizing and labeling websites, intranets, online communities and software to support

usability and findability; and an emerging community of practice focused on bringing principles of

design, architecture and information science to the digital landscape.

Typically, it involves a model or concept of information that is used and applied to activities which

require explicit details of complex information systems. These activities include library systems and

database development.

Figure 19 – a list of information classes developed and used by the marketplace platform

Entity defined in web data store:

Citizens

Organizations

Private Organizations


Public Organizations

Point of interests

Recycling centre

Reuse Center

Landfill

Offer

Request

Events

News

Every entities have specific “tags” (attribute). Using tags data became more researchable on web and

in platform. Tags can be updated in Administration Panel of EzPublish.

Figure 20 – Content Structure – Backoffice view

Classifications defined in the platform:

Categories of products

Nace Code (it ATECO)


EWC Code (it CER)

Points of contact

Classifications can be manually inserted using Administration Panel of EzPublish or uploaded using

CVS of OpenOffice import functions. You can also download data in different format (PDF, ODT,

Word) for control or other uses.



3.6 The Data Connector: automated loading and downloading data

Data that can be uploaded to the portal using specific format and also managed by the CRUD Web

API made available by the platform. This is the list of dataset upload, refined and tested by the

GREENCYCLE project at the date:

Location of the material collection centres

Monthly urban waste collection

Waste conferred in public landfills.

API for uploads will be customize for specific data.

The development environment and the system selected for the development of the platform makes

available easily API to download data form database. Database is designed using SCHEMA.ORG

entities so data will be well standardized.



4. Hosting and Technical specifications

Platform will be developed using Trentino Digitale OpenPA middleware platform based on EzPublish

open source content management, an open source management system for creating customer

experiences, already adopted for the development of the Public Administration web platform in

Trentino (more than 200 web site are sharing this platform)

Figure 22 – The Trentino Digitale hosting platform for the Marketplace Platform


5. Other Requirements

Platform will be developed in Multilanguage format.

Base language will be English and the others Italian, German and Slovenian.

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