Affiliated projects
Undermining Infrastructure
The goal of the UI project is to quantify the material requirements and dependencies, especially in terms of critical materials, of planned low-carbon infrastructure deployments. To design a truly adaptable, sustainable, low-carbon infrastructure and deliver it without bottlenecks caused by materials scarcity and waste management, we need to be able to model:
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the flow of materials into and out of infrastructure;
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the stocks of materials contained within infrastructure, during operation and demolition;
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the location and properties of these materials and the components they are a part of;
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the criticality of key materials, in terms of substitutability and supply risks;
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the interactions between these factors.
We propose to achieve this by expanding the usual single-element Stocks and Flows modelling paradigm and rebuilding it as a parallel, multi-element planning tool encompassing resource demand projections (and hence potential vulnerabilities) and material properties information (for effective re-use strategies). This will require S&F to be complemented with three new levels of information, detailed below.
