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Material Flow Accounting
Material flow accounting (MFA) is the study of material flows on a national or regional scale. It is therefore sometimes also referred to as regional, national or economy-wide material flow analysis. Introduction Material flow accounting provides economy-wide data on material use. Through international standardization, this data has become reliable and comparable across countries. Increasingly, the data are also being made available in medium- to long-term time series allowing for the analysis of past trends as well as potential future developments. Material flow accounts provide information on the material inputs into, the changes in material stock within, and the material outputs in the form of exports to other economies or discharges to the environment of an economy. Material flow accounting can be used in national planning, especially for scarce resources, and also allows for forecasting. The method can be used to assess environmental burdens associated with the economic activit ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Material Flow Analysis
Material flow analysis (MFA), also referred to as substance flow analysis (SFA), is an analytical method to quantify flows and stocks of materials or substances in a well-defined system. MFA is an important tool to study the bio-physical aspects of human activity on different spatial and temporal scales. It is considered a core method of industrial ecology or anthropogenic, urban, social and industrial metabolism. MFA is used to study material, substance, or product flows across different industrial sectors or within ecosystems. MFA can also be applied to a single industrial installation, for example, for tracking nutrient flows through a waste water treatment plant. When combined with an assessment of the costs associated with material flows this business-oriented application of MFA is called material flow cost accounting. MFA is an important tool to study the circular economy and to devise material flow management. Since the 1990s, the number of publications related to mater ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Industrial Metabolism
Industrial metabolism is a concept to describe the material and energy turnover of industrial systems. It was proposed by Robert Ayres in analogy to the biological metabolism as "the whole integrated collection of physical processes that convert raw materials and energy, plus labour, into finished products and wastes..." In analogy to the biological concept of metabolism, which is used to describe the whole of chemical reactions in, for example, a cell to maintain its functions and reproduce itself, the concept of industrial metabolism describes the chemical reactions, transport processes, and manufacturing activities in industry. Industrial metabolism presupposes a connection between different industrial activities by seeing them as part of a larger system, such as a material cycle or the supply chain of a commodity. System scientists, for example in industrial ecology, use the concept as paradigm to study the flow of materials or energy through the industrial system in order to ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Urban Metabolism
Urban metabolism is a scientific modelling, model to facilitate the description and analysis of the material flow, flows of the materials and energy transfer, energy within cities, such as undertaken in a material flow analysis of a city. It provides researchers with a metaphorical framework to study the interactions of natural and human systems in specific regions.Pincetl, S., Bunje, P., & Holmes, T. (2012). An expanded urban metabolism method: Toward a systems approach for assessing urban energy processes and causes. Landscape and Urban Planning, 193-202. From the beginning, researchers have tweaked and altered the parameters of the urban metabolism model. C. Kennedy and fellow researchers have produced a clear definition in the 2007 paper ''The Changing Metabolism of Cities'' claiming that urban metabolism is "the sum total of the technical and socio-economic process that occur in cities, resulting in growth, production of energy and elimination of waste."Kennedy, C., Cuddihy, J., ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sustainability
Specific definitions of sustainability are difficult to agree on and have varied in the literature and over time. The concept of sustainability can be used to guide decisions at the global, national, and individual levels (e.g. sustainable living). Sustainability is commonly described as having three dimensions (also called pillars): environmental, economic, and social. Many publications state that the environmental dimension (also called "planetary integrity" or "ecological integrity") is the most important, and, in everyday usage, "sustainability" is often focused on countering major environmental problems, such as climate change, loss of biodiversity, loss of ecosystem services, land degradation, and air and water pollution. Humanity is now exceeding several "planetary boundaries". A closely related concept is that of sustainable development, and the terms are often used synonymously. However, UNESCO distinguishes the two thus: "''Sustainability'' is often thought of as a lon ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Social Metabolism
Social metabolism or socioeconomic metabolism is the set of flows of materials and energy that occur between nature and society, between different societies, and within societies. These human-controlled material and energy flows are a basic feature of all societies but their magnitude and diversity largely depend on specific cultures, or sociometabolic regimes. El metabolismo social: una nueva teoría socioecológica. Relaciones. 2013. Social or socioeconomic metabolism is also described as "the self-reproduction and evolution of the structures of human soc ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Material Flow Management
Material flow management (MFM) is a method of efficiently managing materials. The triad of environmental, social and economical orientation makes MFM a tool of high importance in the field of sustainable development and circular economy. Seen historically, material flow management is a tool that can be understood as an implementation-orientated advancement of the methodology of material flow analysis (MFA). MFM was established as a policy tool after the UN Earth Summit conference in Rio de Janeiro 1992. The German Bundestag outlined the targets and specific goals of MFM in a special report by an Enquete Commission. See also * Material flow accounting Material flow accounting (MFA) is the study of material flows on a national or regional scale. It is therefore sometimes also referred to as regional, national or economy-wide material flow analysis Material flow analysis (MFA), also referred to as ... References Materials Industrial ecology Sustainability and environmenta ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Material Flow Analysis
Material flow analysis (MFA), also referred to as substance flow analysis (SFA), is an analytical method to quantify flows and stocks of materials or substances in a well-defined system. MFA is an important tool to study the bio-physical aspects of human activity on different spatial and temporal scales. It is considered a core method of industrial ecology or anthropogenic, urban, social and industrial metabolism. MFA is used to study material, substance, or product flows across different industrial sectors or within ecosystems. MFA can also be applied to a single industrial installation, for example, for tracking nutrient flows through a waste water treatment plant. When combined with an assessment of the costs associated with material flows this business-oriented application of MFA is called material flow cost accounting. MFA is an important tool to study the circular economy and to devise material flow management. Since the 1990s, the number of publications related to mater ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Material Criticality
Material criticality is the determination of which materials that flow through an industry or economy are most important to the production process. It is a sub-category within the field of material flow analysis (MFA), which is a method to quantitatively analyze the flows of materials used for industrial production in an industry or economy. MFA is a useful tool to assess what impacts materials used in the industrial process have and how efficiently a given process uses them. Material criticality evaluation criteria consist of three dimensions: supply risk, vulnerability to supply restriction, and environmental implications. Supply risk comprises several components, and changes based on short or long-term temporal outlooks. Vulnerability to supply restriction is dependent on the organizational level (global, national, and corporate). This methodology was developed from a United States National Research Council model, and is intended to help stakeholders make strategic decisions abo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Input–output Model
In economics, an input–output model is a quantitative economic model that represents the interdependencies between different sectors of a national economy or different regional economies.Thijs Ten Raa, Input–Output Economics: Theory and Applications: Featuring Asian Economies', World Scientific, 2009 Wassily Leontief (1906–1999) is credited with developing this type of analysis and earned the Nobel Prize in Economics for his development of this model. Origins Francois Quesnay had developed a cruder version of this technique called Tableau économique, and Léon Walras's work ''Elements of Pure Economics'' on general equilibrium theory also was a forerunner and made a generalization of Leontief's seminal concept. Alexander Bogdanov has been credited with originating the concept in a report delivered to the All Russia Conference on the Scientific Organisation of Labour and Production Processes, in January 1921. This approach was also developed by L. N. Kritsman and T. F. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Industrial Ecology
Industrial ecology (IE) is the study of material and energy flows through industrial systems. The global industrial economy can be modelled as a network of industrial processes that extract resources from the Earth and transform those resources into products and services which can be bought and sold to meet the needs of humanity. Industrial ecology seeks to quantify the material flows and document the industrial processes that make modern society function. Industrial ecologists are often concerned with the impacts that industrial activities have on the environment, with use of the planet's supply of natural resources, and with problems of waste disposal. Industrial ecology is a young but growing multidisciplinary field of research which combines aspects of engineering, economics, sociology, toxicology and the natural sciences. Industrial ecology has been defined as a "systems-based, multidisciplinary discourse that seeks to understand emergent behavior of complex integrated ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Marina Fischer-Kowalski
Marina Fischer-Kowalski (born 1946) is an Austrian sociologist and social ecologist and a professor emeritus of the University of Klagenfurt, currently teaching at the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Vienna, the University of Klagenfurt and the University of Vienna. She is known for founding the Vienna School of Social Ecology and for her pioneering work on the widely used metric for material and energy flows to complement economic accounting. Fischer-Kowalski works on socio-environmental change, sustainable development and the Anthropocene. Education Fischer-Kowalski was born 1946 in Vienna as the daughter of the political activist Ruth von Mayenburg and the politician and writer Ernst Fischer. She received her PhD in sociology at the University of Vienna in 1971 and a postgraduate degree in social sciences from the Institute for Advanced Studies in 1973. In 1985, Fischer-Kowalski was awarded the habilitation in sociology at the University of Graz. Career Fis ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Environmentally Extended Input–output Analysis
Environmentally extended input–output analysis (EEIOA) is used in environmental accounting as a tool which reflects production and consumption structures within one or several economies. As such, it is becoming an important addition to material flow accounting. Introduction In recognition of the increasing importance of global resource use mediated by international trade for environmental accounting and policy, new perspectives have been and are currently being developed within environmental accounting. The most prominent among these are consumption-based accounts compiled using environmentally extended input-output analysis. Consumption-based indicators of material use are commonly referred to as “material footprints” (comparable to carbon footprints and water footprints) or as raw material equivalents (RME) for imported and exported goods. Raw material equivalents or material footprints of traded goods comprise the material inputs required along the entire supply chain associ ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
