KartAL II

Mapping the Stock of Buildings in Germany II

The efficient and sparing use of natural resources is one of the greatest economic, social, and ecological challenges of our time and is attracting more and more attention on national and international agendas. While the main aim is to conserve resources, the recycling of materials must also be improved. Germany has enormous reservoirs of raw materials in the form of anthropogenic material stocks contained in buildings, infrastructures, and other durable goods. In the discussion on resource efficiency, which has been dominated by input aspects, this capital stock has attracted little attention. One reason has been insufficient knowledge about existing anthropogenic material stocks and their change dynamics. Although numerous individual studies have been carried out on inventories of individual material groups, products, or sectors and their development, there has so far been no systematic compilation of this knowledge. This is an essential condition for the systematic management of anthropogenic raw material stocks. The project sought to develop and program a dynamic, updatable inventory database for durable goods, which will serve as a forecast model for secondary raw materials and a planning framework for urban mining. It aimed to widen the knowledge base and evidence for decision making in the circular economy by highlighting future recycling potentials. For this purpose, a database was developed to be combined with a calculable material flow network. This model was meant to represent not only an inventory of goods and materials but also their specific dynamics. Interfaces for adding data were implemented to guarantee updateability. The database facilitates knowledge management of inventory data at great depth and detail. The material flow network grants flexibility in analysing the anthropogenic stocks on very different scales, i.e. on national, sectoral or regional levels comprising both mass flow related and flow of goods approaches.

The Leibniz Institute of Ecological Urban and Regional Development is jointly funded by the federal government and the federal states.

FS Sachsen

This measure is co-financed by tax funds on the basis of the budget approved by the Saxon State Parliament.