REFLOW - Stockholm Royal Seaport's Eco-cycle model

The City of Stockholm has ambitious sustainability goals and strives to be a global role model in sustainable urban development. Amongst other things, this has resulted in urban development projects with high sustainability ambitions, such as Hammarby Sjöstad and Stockholm Royal Seaport. One of the main challenges is to reduce cities' resource consumption and environmental impact. To increase understanding and optimize the city's various resource flows, extensive development work with a circular model has been ongoing for several years in Stockholm Royal Seaport.

In 2011, inspired by the Hammarby Model, the City of Stockholm and KTH Royal Institute of Technology initiated the development of an eco-cycle model for the Stockholm Royal Seaport, known as Eco-cycle Model 2.0. The model received substantial recognition both nationally and internationally for illustrating the complexity of resource flows within the district and demonstrating the city's resource utilisation. Subsequently, the model was simplified to enhance accessibility and user-friendliness.

REFLOW was developed as an interactive tool to explain the city's visible and hidden resource flows. This simplified tool visualises the flow of water, energy, and materials. REFLOW was specifically designed for younger audiences, using animated images and illustrations to communicate the complexities of urban flows in an educational and engaging manner.

In 2017, scientific work commenced on developing a mathematical model that could be populated with data to provide insights into the city's resource consumption and environmental impact. Through the project 'Resource Flows of Stockholm Royal Seaport', funded by the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency, the Urban Accounting Model was developed in collaboration with KTH. The model was used for structuring the data needed to collect and analyse the city's resource flows. The project 'Connected SRS - Connected Stockholm Royal Seaport' also explored the availability of digital data.

When the findings from these projects were compiled and integrated, access to data-driven insights into resource consumption offered a more comprehensive understanding of resource use and its environmental impact. As a result of this progress, Smart Built Environment approved funding in 2023 to further develop the eco-cycle model.

Purpose and goal

The project aims to further develop REFLOW into an integrated model for analysing and monitoring urban resource use. Additionally, the ambition is to advance the eco-cycle model based on current research, ensuring it is tailored to the conditions of both the City of Stockholm and other Swedish municipalities.

The objective is to develop a knowledge base that fosters understanding of resource flows through our cities, identifies opportunities for increased circularity, and assesses their environmental and climate impacts.

Furthermore, the current project will prepare documentation for the future procurement of a tool designed to visualise and describe resource flows and their climate impact. This tool will also aid in the future planning of sustainable communities.

The benefits of the project for sustainability work in Swedish municipalities are:

• Development of evidence-based and efficient methods for monitoring and developing strategies to reduce climate impact.
• Increased clarity and requirements on municipalities as organisations, in terms of making climate-related data available that are open and/or shared.

Results

The current project encompasses several ongoing activities. A market study and two master's theses have been completed to explore how REFLOW can contribute to more comprehensive climate reporting. The Urban Accounting Model has been simplified, and a data inventory is simultaneously underway to identify available data at the Stockholm level and determine how it can be efficiently collected for input into the calculation model.

Efforts on the user perspective are focused on evaluating how REFLOW can support Stockholm's climate initiatives. This includes discussions about the model's potential applications and the necessary user interface requirements to ensure its practical utility.

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