Revolutionizing the Future of Urban Development: CEinCI Project Sets New Standard for Circular Economy in Kazakhstan’s Construction Industry

The CEinCI Project (Circular Economy Indexing in Construction Industry Using Big Data and AI), led by Professor Ferhat Karaca at Nazarbayev University, has successfully concluded its three-year mission, delivering a groundbreaking AI-enabled framework to transform how the construction industry approaches sustainability and resource efficiency. Funded by the Nazarbayev Fund, the project represents a significant leap forward in Central Asia’s transition toward a circular economy.
The project addressed a critical global challenge: the construction sector is a primary contributor to material consumption, solid waste generation, and greenhouse gas emissions. By integrating Artificial Intelligence (AI), Big Data, and high-resolution satellite mapping, the CEinCI team developed the Circular City Indexing (CCI) method, providing a data-driven approach to assess and benchmark construction-site circularity across diverse global cities.
Key Achievements and SDG Alignment
The CEinCI project directly contributes to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) through its innovative research and practical applications:
• SDG 9: Industry, Innovation, and Infrastructure: The project developed the Multi-City Construction Stage Dataset (MC-CSD), featuring over 42,000 annotated instances from 34 cities. This high-quality big data resource enables data-centric innovation and addresses the scarcity of datasets in civil engineering.
• SDG 11: Sustainable Cities and Communities: Through its DL-SLICER framework and GIS-based assessment tools, the project provides municipalities with evidence-based strategies for greener urban planning. This includes post-disaster road accessibility frameworks vital for urban resilience.
• SDG 12: Responsible Consumption and Production: The research formalized a hierarchy of ten “R” principles (e.g., Refuse, Reuse, Recycle) and identified strategies for Construction and Demolition Waste (CDW) management that can achieve recycling efficiencies of up to 95%.
• SDG 13: Climate Action: By strengthening circular practices, the project contributes to national decarbonization goals and helps mitigate the environmental impact of construction activities.
• SDG 4: Quality Education & SDG 17: Partnerships for the Goals: The project mentored 5 PhD and 6 Master’s students and fostered a global collaboration network involving 96 authors across 20 countries.
A Roadmap for the Future
"The CEinCI project has established a new foundation for circular economy efforts in Central Asia," said Professor Ferhat Karaca, Principal Investigator. "By bridging cutting-edge AI research with real-world implementation, we have created a commercialization-oriented roadmap and a data-driven framework that will guide Kazakhstan’s sustainability transformation for years to come".
The project’s final event, the AI, Digital Innovation, and Circularity conference, convened international experts and policymakers to discuss the future of circular construction, ensuring the project's findings translate into tangible policy and industrial applications.
For more information, please contact the Nazarbayev University Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering.
About the CEinCI Project: The Circular Economy Indexing in Construction Industry (CEinCI) project uses Big Data and AI to support the sustainable management of construction activities. It aims to provide actionable insights for policymakers, practitioners, and researchers to optimize resource use and waste management in the built environment