A central knowledge hub for the secure, sustainable supply of raw materials

To ensure a secure and sustainable supply of raw materials and to better manage resource use, Europe requires comprehensive knowledge of the entire raw materials value chain. However, information is often scattered across several sources, such as ministries, agencies, geological surveys, research institutes, and universities.

Launched today at the European Commission's raw materials week, the Raw Materials Information System (RMIS) is the starting point for bringing this knowledge together. It provides a central platform in a user-friendly format, with key information on non-fuel, non-agricultural raw materials from primary and secondary sources. It focuses on both abiotic (minerals) and biotic materials, covering the entire value chain.

The Commission is committed to promoting the competitiveness of EU industries directly and indirectly reliant on the secure and sustainable supply of raw materials. These industries play an important role in many downstream sectors, such as construction, chemicals, automotive, aerospace, machinery, and renewable energy devices, which have a combined added value of €1,000 billion and provide employment for some 30 million people.

As well as being essential to industry, raw materials permeate our daily lives and livelihoods - from the dozens of metals, minerals and compounds inside the latest smartphone to the rare earth elements used in electric vehicles, cancer treatments, solar panels and aerospace technologies.

The RMIS is being launched in the context of the Strategic Implementation Plan of the European Innovation Partnership on raw materials (EIP-SIP), which highlights the need to develop a European Union Raw Materials Knowledge Base (EURMKB). The RMIS is designed as a core part of the communities’ raw materials knowledge base to facilitate coherence, quality-assurance and availability of information. Responding to a specific action of the Circular Economy Action and to several actions in the Raw Materials Strategic Implementation Plan, the RMIS is a formal commitment of the European Commission.

Facilitating the availability of core data for policy support

The RMIS provides information related to social, environmental, and economic considerations of primary and secondary raw materials with a key focus on EC policy support needs. The RMIS provides in-depth information across 12 interlinked thematic areas, including:

Materials considered critical due to their high risk of supply disruption and high economic importance to EU industry (Critical Raw Materials - CRM)
Materials from recycling and recovery (Secondary Raw Materials – SRM)
Economics and trade
Industry and innovation
Raw materials and country profiles.
The RMIS is also a platform to bring together information on the environmental and social sustainability aspects of the raw materials sector.

The RMIS includes a section on ‘raw materials’ profiles and supply chains’ which allows users to access quantitative and qualitative knowledge relative to the supply chains of nearly 80 raw materials. This section also provides access to data and knowledge related to Material Flow Analysis (MFA) and, in particular, the Material System Analysis (MSA) at the level of the EU-28.

Source: https://ec.europa.eu/jrc/en/news/central-knowledge-hub-secure-sustainabl...