Industrial Symbiotic Relations as Cooperative Games

In this paper, we introduce a game-theoretical formulation for a specific form of collaborative industrial relations called “Industrial Symbiotic Relation (ISR) games” and provide a formal framework to model, verify, and support collaboration decisions in this new class of two-person operational games. ISR games are formalized as cooperative cost-allocation games with the aim to allocate the total ISR-related operational cost to involved industrial firms in a fair and stable manner by taking into account their contribution to the total traditional ISR-related cost. We tailor two types of allocation mechanisms using which firms can implement cost allocations that result in a collaboration that satisfies the fairness and stability properties. Moreover, while industries receive a particular ISR proposal, our introduced methodology is applicable as a managerial decision support to systematically verify the quality of the ISR in question. This is achievable by analyzing if the implemented allocation mechanism is a stable/fair allocation.