An argumentation system for eco-efficient packaging material selection

13 Within the framework of the European project EcoBioCap (ECOeffi14 cient BIOdegradable Composite Advanced Packaging), aiming at con15 ceiving the next generation of food packagings, we have designed an 16 argumentation-based tool for management of conflicting viewpoints 17 between preferences expressed by the involved parties (food and pack18 aging industries, health authorities, consumers, waste management au19 thority, etc.). The requirements and user preferences are modeled by 20 several rules provided by the stakeholders expressing their viewpoints 21 and expertise. Based on these rules, the argumentation tool com22 putes consensual preferences which are used to parametrize a flexible 23 querying process of a packaging database to retrieve the most rele24 vant solution to pack a given food. In this paper, we recall briefly the 25 principles underlying the reasoning process, and we detail the main 26 functionalities and the architecture of the argumentation tool. We 27 cover the overall reasoning steps starting from formal representation 28 of text arguments and ending by extraction of justified preferences 29 which are sent to the database querying process. Finally, we detail its 30 operational functioning through a real life case study to determine the 31 justifiable choices between recyclable, compostable and biodegradable 32 packaging materials based on stakeholders’ arguments. 33