Beyond buzzwords: NLP reveals common threads in sustainable and circular construction discourse

Circular economy and sustainability have both seen rapid growth in academic literature, often leading to ambiguity and the overuse of these terms. This obscures their true objectives and makes it challenging to discern their distinct intentions. Manually analyzing the vast body of recent publications to understand how these concepts connect to environmentally beneficial practices is laborious and time-consuming. This study aims to compare and analyze existing literature on sustainable and circular construction using natural language processing (NLP) techniques to elucidate the similarities and overlaps between these concepts within the construction industry. To achieve this, we employed three NLP methods: (1) TextRank, a graph-based ranking algorithm that extracts key structural relationships between terms in a document; (2) term frequency–inverse document frequency, a statistical measure that identifies the most significant terms based on their frequency and uniqueness within the corpus; and (3) semantic annotation (Wikifier), a method that links text tokens to structured knowledge bases such as Wikipedia for better contextual understanding. These methods are used to analyze a dataset of 480 academic articles focusing on sustainability and circular economy in the construction sector. Our analysis revealed that circular construction is more specific and practical, emphasizing resource efficiency, waste management, and industry-specific processes, targeting the operational aspects of recycling and resource recovery. In contrast, sustainable construction encompasses a broader and more holistic scope, including urban planning, community development, and long-term environmental impacts. This study demonstrates how NLP methods can systematically disentangle closely related frameworks in construction literature, providing a replicable methodological framework for future data-driven investigations. By clarifying the distinctions and overlaps between the terms “circular construction” and “sustainable construction”, our research offers enhanced understanding for policymakers, industry practitioners, and academics aiming to integrate sustainable and circular principles effectively within the construction sector.

Abstract licence: CC BY

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