The transition to a circular built environment requires digital infrastructures that connect stakeholders with construction and deconstruction data. However, despite growing policy attention to circular economy principles, few tools effectively operationalize these data-driven connections in practice. This research introduces a digital matchmaking platform designed to bridge upstream coordination gaps before brokering material trades. It synthesizes a series of previously published studies to propose an integrated research and design pipeline for developing digital infrastructures that enable circular coordination across fragmented ecosystems.
The pipeline unfolds through three complementary studies. The first, conducted through participatory action research (PAR), conceptualized the Butterfly Matchmaking Model (BMM), a framework explaining how data and actor interactions can accelerate circularity within real-world policy and practice constraints. A second PAR study co-developed a sustainable business model to support BMM adoption. Finally, a design science research study translated these insights into a minimum viable product (MVP) integrating reuse hub mapping, automated pre-demolition audit data import, and a material-to-collector matching engine. The MVP was evaluated through expert walkthroughs with practitioners from architecture, engineering, and demolition sectors, yielding qualitative insights on usability, trust, and regulatory alignment. Results highlight the importance of transparent and adjustable matching criteria, low-effort data entry, and open interoperability as key enablers of adoption and policy integration.
Together, these studies demonstrate how participatory and design-science approaches can move circular construction from vision to implementation. By integrating their findings into a coherent pipeline, from conceptual model to digital prototype, the research provides a replicable framework for developing digital artifacts that foster data-driven coordination across circular ecosystems and outlines actionable design principles for scaling digital infrastructures that embed circularity into urban and industrial systems.