Mapping Hamburg's Circular Economy: Inside the Ecosystem Explorer

Innovation rarely happens in isolation. A thriving circular economy depends on the connections between universities, start-ups, industry partners, and public authorities. Work Package 4 set out to map those connections — and the result is the Circular Economy Ecosystem Explorer, an interactive tool that turns a sprawling regional network into something you can actually navigate.

A Living Map of the Regional Ecosystem

The first prototype focuses on Hamburg. Using AI-based web scraping and large language models, the tool gathered and structured information on more than 1,700 organizations active in or around the region's circular economy. The dashboard gives you an immediate sense of scale, with a geographic distribution map and headline figures.

1,748Mapped entities

68Identified partnerships

1Pilot region: Hamburg

The Hamburg Ecosystem Map dashboard with entity counts and a geographic map — The dashboard: an at-a-glance overview of the Hamburg circular economy ecosystem.

Browse the Entity Registry

Every organization in the network lives in a searchable registry. Each entry is tagged by role — public authority, industry partner, research institution, and more — with a short description of what the organization does and how it relates to the circular economy. You can search by name and filter by role to zero in on the actors that matter to you.

The Entities Registry listing organizations with role tags and descriptions — The entity registry: explore 1,748 organizations, filterable by role.

Discover Existing Partnerships

The Explorer doesn't just list organizations — it surfaces the relationships between them. The partnerships view shows collaborations identified within the ecosystem, each with a confidence score and a quoted source so you can see exactly where the connection came from and verify it yourself.

The Identified Partnerships view showing a partnership with a confidence score — Identified partnerships come with a confidence score and a verifiable source.

Find New Collaboration Opportunities

Perhaps the most forward-looking feature is the Collaboration Finder. Instead of only describing what already exists, it helps you browse the ecosystem by activities, capabilities, and needs — making it easier to spot gaps, complementary strengths, and potential new partnerships built on a shared circular economy taxonomy.

The Collaboration Finder with Activities, Capabilities, and Needs tabs — The Collaboration Finder helps identify synergies by activity, capability, or need.

A note on the data: all information in the Explorer was extracted from publicly available websites using AI-based web scraping and large language models. While we strive for accuracy, this process may produce inaccuracies or misattributions, and the data has not been verified by the entities themselves.

Explore the Ecosystem

The Ecosystem Explorer is a first step toward giving stakeholders a shared, navigable picture of their regional circular economy. Dive into the Hamburg map to see how the pieces fit together — and imagine what becomes possible when actors can finally find each other.

Open the Ecosystem Explorer

Links:
Circular Economy Ecosystem Explorer
About Work Package 4

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