Section: New Results

First results on material flow, production and consumption analysis

This theme of research has been started this year through a 6 month internship with a student of Ecole Centrale de Lyon. A large database has been constructed, that allows to analyze material flows, production and consumption by type (and origin and destination in case of flows) at the level of the French region and departments. This database compiles data from a variety of public institutions and private organizations. Almost all the data are in the public domain. A large amount of work has gone into building the database, normalizing the different data sources at least in terms of classification, and into building tools to manipulate the data and produce usable information.

At present, this “physical accounting" has been performed on all French regions for a limited number of materials (in particular cereals, fossil fuels, and construction materials). Furthermore, it has been performed for the same materials at the departement level in the Rhone-Alpes region.

This work is now focusing on various issues:

• By correlating the relevant quantities with other variables (such as, e.g., population or land use, etc), it is possible to downscale the consumption and waste production data at the level of urban regions (where a large part of this information is unavailable). Such an information is critical for the development of decision-help tools at the level of urban areas.

• A process of quantification of the major source of information on material transports is the SitraM database (transportation database maintained by the Ministry of Ecology and Sustainable Development). These data are statistical in nature, but the statistical error is unknown. We are in the process of developping a way to estimate this error.

• The next step will then be to transform this material use in terms of environmental impact. Various types of impacts (global and local) have been identified. The quantification will rely on various known approaches (Life Cycle Analysis, regional Input-Analysis), notably drawing on part of the work performed in this area by the Global Footprint Network (even for impacts that cannot be quantified in terms of land, carbon or water footprint).