Summary Material Flow Analysis (MFA) is a useful method for modeling, understanding, and optimizing sociometabolic systems. Among others, MFAs can be distinguished by two general system properties: First, they differ in their complexity, which depends on system structure and size. Second, they differ in their inherent uncertainty, which arises from limited data quality. In this article, uncertainty and complexity in MFA are ap...

Summary A method for quantitative evaluation of data quality in regional material flow analysis (MFA) is presented. The principal idea is that data quality is a multidimensional problem that cannot be judged by individual characteristics such as the data source, given that data from official statistics may not be per se of good quality and expert estimations may not be per se of bad quality, respectively. It appears that MFA d...

Summary The building stock is not only a huge consumer of resources (for its construction and operation), but also represents a significant source for the future supply of metallic and mineral resources. This article describes how material stocks in buildings and their spatial distribution can be analyzed on a city level. In particular, the building structure (buildings differentiated by construction period and utilization) of...

Summary The validity of material flow analyses (MFAs) depends on the available information base, that is, the quality and quantity of available data. MFA data are cross‐disciplinary, can have varying formats and qualities, and originate from heterogeneous sources, such as official statistics, scientific models, or expert estimations. Statistical methods for data evaluation are most often inadequate, because MFA data are typica...

Summary Urban mining is seen as a key strategy for the recovery of secondary raw materials from the built environment. Although large material stocks have been reported in infrastructure networks, their actual recoverability over time has received little attention so far. This article presents a case study on the prospection and exploration of the anthropogenic resources deposited in Vienna's subway network. After quantifying...

Summary Material flow analysis is a tool that is increasingly used as a foundation for resource management and environmental protection. This tool is primarily applied in a static manner to individual years, ignoring the impact of time on the material budgets. In this study, a detailed multiyear model of the Austrian phosphorus budget covering the period 1990–2011 was built to investigate its behavior over time and test the hy...

Summary Material flow analysis (MFA) is widely used to investigate flows and stocks of resources or pollutants in a defined system. Data availability to quantify material flows on a national or global level is often limited owing to data scarcity or lacking data. MFA input data are therefore considered inherently uncertain. In this work, an approach to characterize the uncertainty of MFA input data is presented and applied to...

Material flow analysis (MFA) is a widely applied tool to investigate resource and recycling systems of metals and minerals. Owing to data limitations and restricted system understanding, MFA results are inherently uncertain. To demonstrate the systematic implementation of uncertainty analysis in MFA, two mathematical concepts for the quantification of uncertainties were applied to Austrian palladium (Pd) resource flows and eva...

Summary Material flow analysis (MFA) is a tool to investigate material flows and stocks in defined systems as a basis for resource management or environmental pollution control. Because of the diverse nature of sources and the varying quality and availability of data, MFA results are inherently uncertain. Uncertainty analyses have received increasing attention in recent MFA studies, but systematic approaches for selection of a...