Criticality assessment for raw materials: perspectives and focuses

Over the last two decades, several methodologies have been developed to assess raw material criticality, and, more precisely, analyze risks jeopardizing a secure raw material supply in the present and the future. The scientific community has not yet established an international consensus on how to evaluate these risks. This might seem surprising, but is a logical outcome of differences in defining aspects such as strategic interests, local resource availability, past experiences of resource shortages or dependencies, the respective international context, and many others. These factors depend strongly on context and can vary over time. To associate methodological choices with different perspectives, this paper introduces a selection of major criticality studies, and anchors them in time, the economic position of the focal actor of the analysis, as well as the system under study. We find that the development of criticality methodologies is largely driven by demand-sided actors and has gained in detail and exhaustiveness over time. The evaluation of supply risk is central to all methodologies, whereas the associated damage is assessed at different levels depending on the complexity of the regarded system. Depending on the system perspective, the final purpose of the criticality assessment can vary from informing policies, comparing alternatives, identifying bottlenecks, or developing mitigation strategies.