Mineral Intelligence Capacity Analysis

Project Information

MICA

Grant agreement ID: 689648

DOI

10.3030/689648

Project closed

EC signature date 20 November 2015

Start date 1 December 2015

End date 31 January 2018

Funded under

• SOCIETAL CHALLENGES - Climate action, Environment, Resource Efficiency and Raw Materials

Total cost

€ 2 005 205,00

EU contribution

€ 1 998 955,00

Coordinated by

Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland
Denmark

Periodic Reporting for period 2 - MICA (Mineral Intelligence Capacity Analysis)

Reporting period: 2017-02-01 to 2018-01-31

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

Raw Materials intelligence (RMI) comprises the knowledge available to provide answers to questions and topics of interest related to raw materials. RMI is developed in a complex context of sectoral policies (mineral, environmental, energy, fiscal, foreign, development, security, spatial planning, water resources, investment, etc.) and regulations at national and international (EU) levels. RMI, furthermore, covers numerous scholarly disciplines within the natural and technical sciences, social sciences, political sciences, legal studies, and information technologies. In the last decade, a significant effort was made in Europe to provide end users with public data related to raw materials in a seamless way. However, data, information, methods, models and tools available are linked in a complex, multidimensional way and using these to derive answers to questions on raw materials is not straightforward. It requires expert knowledge, know-how and skills to apply the data, methods/tools adequately and requires frequently a broad band of knowledge on raw materials that is not commonly available to all stakeholders. Also, stakeholder questions will often need to be further refined to determine which data, methods and expertise from these different disciplines is required to properly answer them.

Access to RMI is important for society as a whole as the availability of raw materials influences everyone’s life. The availability of RMI is important to many types of stakeholders in the public and private sector as it supports them in obtaining a better understanding of how data and methods can be used to support decision making; on which data and tools raw material policies are/could be based and what the availability and sustainability of raw material supply is.

The objective of MICA is to make stakeholders able to derive their own answers to their raw material related questions by providing them with a tool - the ontology-based European Union Raw Materials Intelligence Capacity Platform (EU-RMICP) - that provides data, information and expert knowledge to them in a structured way. This data and information has been compiled by the MICA expert group and is complemented by 'fact-'and 'docSheets' that are peer-reviewed, expert-prepared documents on particular raw material subjects that explain methods or concepts in a condensed way. The appearance of these Sheets, data and information, as well as 'linkedSheets' which represent links to specific sources, are then structured by a 'recipe' or 'flowSheet' into an order of appearance for the user to guide her/him on how to use the input in an adequate sequence to find an answer to a particular question.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

WP1
D1.1 consists of a list of advisory board (AB) members
D1.2 specifies the mid-way recommendations from the AB
D1.3 contains the first year report
D1.4 summarizes the MICA project in a final report
D1.5 outlines ethic issues

WP2
D2.1 identifies, defines and classifies stakeholders in RMI into seven stakeholder types classified by the presence of power, legitimacy and/or urgency in relation to RMI.
D2.2 documents the appraisal of key stakeholders’ needs and requirements to RMI. Three empirical appraisal types (surveys, stakeholder workshop and interviews) were utilized to collect RMI stakes. More than 700 statements expressing RMI needs and requirements were collected and interpreted to design the EU-RMICP so that stakeholders are actually interested in using it.

WP3
D3.1 presents the draft data inventory that has been developed to support the MICA platform, using a metadata structure and template.
D3.2 provides the final inventory with 410 records related to the different domains and concepts of the EU-RMICP. An online data portal (http://metadata.mica-project.eu/mmd) was developed, which allows access to all these metadata records.
D3.3 reportes on the transformation of data into information and knowledge.
D3.4 together with D4.4 serves to provide recommendations on how to integrate data, methods and expert knowledge to inform RMI.

WP4
D4.1 provides factSheets of methods for RMI. It classifies the methods into four categories: The non-geological methods (derived from industrial ecology and economics, and forward-looking methods)
D4.2 maps MICA methods to stakeholder questions and describes which methods are useful in answering stakeholder questions and recommendations are made with regard to combining different methods to have more powerful tools.
D4.3 provides case of how the delineated methods are applied.
D4.4 is elaborated jointly with D3.4 (see above).

WP5
D5.1 outlines RMI tools and Methods.
D5.2 develops and applies the RMI-Matrix for strategic approaches and foresight studies.
D5.3 provides the Foresight Logframe, the basis for the review and assessment of a range of foresight studies on raw materials.
D5.4 summarizes the results of the pilot foresight workshop.
D5.5 presents the raw materials foresight guide.
D5.6 reports on the status-quo and needs related to RMI implementation.

WP6
D6.0 provided a preliminary outline of the EU-RMICP.
D6.1 described the EU-RMICP system methodology.
D6.2 delivered and integrated the EU-RMICP .

An ontology that covers a complete range of raw material domains structured into primary- and secondary mineral resources, industrial processing, raw material economics, raw materials policy, sustainability of raw materials and international reporting was developed from scratch.

A complete version of the ontology-based Dynamic Decision Graph (DDG) is available from mid-March 2018.

WP7 was in charge of dissemination of the project.
D7.1 describes the graphical identity of MICA.
D7.2 outlines the created promotion material.
D7.3 discusses the communication and dissemination strategy.
D7.4 represents MICAs presence on social media.
D7.5 describes MICAs workshops and dissemination events

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

WP2 delivered a stakeholder inventory (D2.1) and an empirical appraisal of stakeholder needs (D2.2) that exceeds all previous activities in the raw material field. Its systematic approach, level of detail and comprehensiveness provide a sound basis for other strategic activities in the RMI domain.

WP3 developed an online MICA data portal and template, which ensures direct access to data records and a consistent approach to metadata records being developed.

In a collaborative effort between WP3 and WP4, as well as with several members of the MICA consortium, progress beyond the state of the art was achieved with regard to developing flowSheets from stakeholder questions. This is an innovative approach with the purpose of transformation from tacit expert knowledge to tangible knowledge. A methodology was developed that specifies how to enable the transformation of tacit expert knowledge to tangible knowledge.

The raw materials foresight guide and logframe developed by WP5 is an output that progresses beyond the state of the art, presenting a tool that may be applied by policy makers.

The approach for the ontology and DDG developed inside MICA is entirely new, and makes this project a research/innovation project that is laying the foundations for a Raw Materials Expert System. The results can be used and upgraded by new projects for different applications. The perimeter of the ontology and its depth/granularity can be easily extended and the mechanics behind can be used for expertise/decision-making in other domains/sub-domains linked to raw materials.

7 domains of the MICA ontology

MICA tutorial and promotional video access

Data-information-knowledge-intelligence model

MICA project website interface

Overview of the MICA raw material intelligence capacity platform (EU-RMICP)

Visualization of a flowSheet for a specific stakeholder question

Assignment of 90 MICA stakeholder groups to 6 stakeholder types.

Extract of a factSheet

MICA user interface; access address

MICA multidimensional ontology with 7 domains and their subconcepts