Understanding Industrial Symbiosis Through Simulation: A Review of Modeling Approaches and Future Directions

Industrial Symbiosis (IS) has recently been established as a practical strategy to enhance the environmental sustainability of industrial systems. Simulation can potentially improve decision-making regarding IS implementation and management by capturing IS dynamicity and complexity. This work presents a systematic literature review and bibliometric analysis to identify the main trends, gaps, and future research directions. The results highlight resilience as an emerging, unifying theme in literature, increasingly recognized as a key condition for the long-term viability of IS networks. However, existing studies mainly address resilience from a technical and operational perspective, while its institutional, policy, and systemic dimensions remain underexplored. Furthermore, the review reveals a significant gap in assessing social sustainability, as the potential social impacts and benefits of IS are rarely incorporated into simulation models.