Sustainability is rarely about a single metric. In complex systems, improving one aspect often affects another—efficiency can come at the cost of maintainability, performance may increase material use, and short-term optimisation can undermine long-term impact. The Managing Sustainability Tradeoffs (MAST) project addresses this reality head-on by developing methods and tools to identify, analyse and manage sustainability tradeoffs in real-world systems.
MAST is an ITEA-funded international research and development project, with use cases across Denmark, Portugal and the Netherlands. The project focuses on software-intensive systems, recognising that digital technologies increasingly shape how products are designed, operated and maintained—and therefore how sustainable they ultimately are. Cirmar contributes to MAST through its parent company FBBasic, bringing expertise in Digital Product Passports and standardisation to the project.
Many sustainability approaches focus on isolated improvements, such as energy efficiency or reduced emissions. MAST starts from a broader perspective. In software-intensive systems, sustainability is influenced by a combination of factors including efficiency, maintainability, system architecture and material use. Decisions made in software design can affect hardware lifetimes, upgrade cycles and resource consumption just as much as physical design choices.
Within MAST, sustainability is treated as a set of interconnected dimensions that must be balanced rather than optimised independently. This makes tradeoffs visible and allows organisations to make informed decisions instead of relying on assumptions.
One of the distinguishing features of the MAST project is its explicit inclusion of material use alongside software-related concerns. Software systems do not exist in isolation; they rely on physical infrastructure, devices and components whose materials and lifecycles matter.
Cirmar, via FBBasic, contributes to this perspective by ensuring that material considerations are properly integrated into sustainability analyses. This includes linking digital system behaviour to physical products and understanding how design choices influence material flows, replacement cycles and end-of-life scenarios.
Within the MAST project, Digital Product Passports (DPPs) play a key role in connecting data across disciplines. Passports provide a structured way to document product composition, system architecture, lifecycle impact and circular options. They help ensure that sustainability information is not fragmented, but accessible throughout development, operation and recovery.
Cirmar supports the creation and structuring of DPPs within the project, enabling use cases to capture both digital and physical sustainability data in a coherent way. This allows tradeoffs to be analysed with real, product-level information rather than abstract indicators.
For sustainability approaches to scale, they must align with standards. A core contribution of Cirmar and FBBasic within MAST is the connection between project outcomes and ongoing standardisation efforts. By aligning methods, data structures and digital tools with emerging standards, the project helps ensure that its results can be applied beyond individual pilots.
This work supports broader adoption of sustainability-by-design principles in software-intensive systems and strengthens the foundation for future regulatory and industry frameworks.
MAST brings together diverse use cases across multiple European countries, each with its own context and system characteristics. This diversity strengthens the project by testing sustainability tradeoff methods in different environments and applications. It also reinforces the idea that there is no one-size-fits-all solution—only better-informed decisions.
By contributing to these use cases, Cirmar and FBBasic help translate theoretical models into practical insights that organisations can apply when designing, operating and improving complex systems.
At its core, MAST is about clarity. By making sustainability tradeoffs explicit, organisations gain the ability to choose consciously rather than implicitly. This transparency is essential for building systems that are not only efficient or performant, but genuinely sustainable over time.
For Cirmar, participation in MAST reflects a broader commitment to combining digital tools, material intelligence and standardisation into practical circular strategies. It shows how sustainability can be embedded into complex systems—not as an afterthought, but as an integral part of design and decision-making.