Knowledge base to facilitate Anthropogenic Resource Assessment

The traditional mining sector uses resource assessments to estimate the mineability of natural resources. The results are communicated to investors, authorities and corporate management boards in a standardized manner, at least on a country level. The recycling sector also requires estimates of recoverable anthropogenic resources. Evidence-based resource assessment, including the selection of parameters for characterising resources and methods for assessing their recoverability, is essential to obtain comparable estimates over time and across scales. Within this report, the COST Action MINEA presents a practical and user-friendly knowledge base for facilitating anthropogenic resource assessments. The fouces is on extractives industry residues, residues in landfills, residues from municipal solid waste incineration as well as construction & demolition waste flows.

The key objectives are:

1. To relate current knowledge levels, gaps and future needs to assessments of viability of anthropogenic resource recovery.
2. To review case studies that demonstrate anthropogenic resource assessment in combination with resource classification in order to communicate the viability of anthropogenic resource recovery.

We encourage academics, businesses and government organisations to use this report for: designing and developing case studies, future planning, developing standards for characterizing resource quantities and evaluating their recoverability, and collecting and harmonizing resource statistics.

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The “Mining the European Anthroposphere” (MINEA) is a pan-European expert network, which received funding from the COST Association between 2016 and 2020. The network pools knowledge for estimating the future recoverability of raw materials from anthropogenic resources.