A team of ten collaborating Australian institutions have begun work
on a new project establishing ground-breaking electronic infrastructure for
environmental and economic modeling. The 'Industrial Ecology Virtual
Laboratory' will enable the rapid and cost-effective deployment of
harmonized, large-scale, detailed Multi-Region Input-Output (MRIO) analysis
systems. Such systems are sought after in economics, environmental science, and industrial ecology for their ability to comprehensively trace environmental
impacts across complex interregional supply chains. MRIO analysis has emerged
as the major tool underpinning consumption-based accounting of environmental
impacts.
The Industrial Ecology Lab will significantly enhance Australia’s
analytical capabilities in Life-Cycle Assessment (LCA), carbon footprinting,
water footprinting, and other approaches to environmental impact assessment. It
will also improve capacity for modeling future effects of changes in
economic and environmental policy. Using novel methods for advanced computation
and automation the Industrial Ecology Lab will integrate a diverse set of data
streams with a calculation engine that can rapidly react as new information
becomes available.
This helps to integrate and harmonize data and methods for
sustainability accounting, analysis and assessments, marking a new era in
sustainability research. It will improve the quality and reliability of
information provided for applications such as eco-labelling of products,
corporate reporting, supply-chain analysis, policy formation, and
infrastructure selection.
Funding for the virtual laboratory was awarded by the Australian
Government’s NeCTAR scheme and the project is supported by the Australian Bureau of Statistics. Hosting the
Industrial Ecology Lab on a NeCTAR Research Cloud will make it accessible to
Australia’s research and policy development community.
For further information on the project please contact Tommy
Wiedmann, UNSW, on email t.wiedmann@unsw.edu.au.
Tommy Wiedmann
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