A Digital Ecosystem for Environmental Benchmarking and Decision Support in Aggregate Production

Paper in proceeding, 2026

Mass balancing of raw material regional supply is a particular challenge for the quarry
and construction industry. This includes both virgin and recycled material, aggregates and soil in
many cases, small to large infrastructure projects, multiple suppliers and entrepreneurs, and over
multiple data systems. Supply and demand are not always synchronized; demand is tight on both
economic and environmental choices, which sometimes leads to suboptimal decisions that favour
economic benefits. Current practices are often fragmented, with limited integration between
process data, environmental assessments, and supply chain planning tools.
This paper presents research and development efforts to enable a digital ecosystem with seamless
data transfer, visualization, and benchmarking of aggregate production and supply. The framework
brings together multiple industry-oriented methods and tools developed within ongoing research
initiatives, demonstrating their potential for interoperability and coordinated use. This includes
process and environmental calculation platforms Plantsmith, a GIS-based system (QuarryGIS) for
visualization of environmental benchmarking and logistics in infrastructure projects, and an AI
assistant based on a retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) system supporting the development of
Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs). Other relevant digitalization efforts will also be
highlighted to enable a wider digital ecosystem for the aggregates supply system.
The proposed approaches demonstrate how digital integration can support mass-balance
consistency, improve transparency in material flows, and enable data-driven decision-making
across production and supply chain levels. The results highlight the potential for improved resource
efficiency, reduced environmental impact, and more informed selection of aggregates supplier in
infrastructure projects.