2010 Volume 6 Issue 2 Pages 88-91
In this article, we explained a new approach to predict future demand for materials based on in-use material stock prediction. Materials, such as metals, engineering plastics, and construction minerals, perform their function as long as being used in products, e.g. automobiles, machines, buildings, infrastructure, etc. Materials are consumed to meet the needs of our activities. Here, we established a hypothesis that material demand is estimated by additionally required amount of in-use stock. In recent studies of material flow analysis, material stock in anthroposphere has been classified into in-use stock and obsolete or hibernating stock. Our approach is based on time-series data of in-use material stock estimated by dynamic material flow analysis. We assumed that the in-use stock per capita will be saturated at certain amount. Prediction of demand can be calculated by mass balance among the demand（inflow）, outflow estimated by the dynamic approach, and net addition to stock estimated by prediction of the in-use stock. As a case study, prediction of demand for steel used in infrastructure in East Asia was shown.
