Post from Dr. Stefan Pauliuk

Dear colleagues,

the ISIE council has approved of a task force on data transparency (cc) to develop proposals for how to increase the transparency and data availability of industrial ecology research, including MFA.

The rationales behind the initiative are i) to speed up progress and facilitate cumulative research by making more data easier available, ii) to increase the usage of research results outside our own field, and iii) to respond to the increasing number of transparency demands from research funders.

Part of our mandate is to review data sharing practice (with a focus on best practice) and recommend improvements for the different IE research fields. In that regard, I have two requests:

1) For a JIE forum piece on the topic, which is to be launched at the Chicago conference, we are looking for examples for exceptional transparency in MFA research. What are, in your opinion, good examples of MFA research where
+ an MFA article surprised you by publishing its entire or large parts of its data inventory alongside the final results?
+ the authors of an MFA study made part of their data inventory public whilst at the same time protecting specific proprietary data points?
+ a recent article managed to format its data or results such that they were easy to import and re-use?
+ a recent publication was accompanied with methods such that you could readily reproduce all its calculations and data manipulations?

2) To encourage data sharing we want to point to specific data formats. In MFA a widely accepted data format, that could play a role similar to the one of ecospold in LCA or SUTs in IO, is still absent. Based on previous experience from working with Daniel Müller and with input from Rupert Myers, who is currently building a database for the STAF project at Yale, I developed a template that lists the mandatory and optional attributes and descriptors of MFA data that are needed when exchanging MFA data from one researcher/project/software to another, and that could be developed into a data format later on. The template is attached; it includes some examples for datasets and detailed explanations. It is meant as a point of departure to establish a minimal consensus of how MFA data should be structured, and it is clear that many MFA results will require additional specifiers, represented as columns in the template, to be fully described. The plan is to publish the attached template as supplementary material along with the forum piece.

On behalf of the task force, I would very much appreciate your input on transparent MFA research and your feedback on the data template!

Maybe there is a data expert in your group who could contribute to the process?

Please respond by April 30 so that we have time for revisions and a possible second feedback round.

Please use this link to the template for the readers to download:

http://www.omnibus.uni-freiburg.de/~sp1046/Documents/MFA_Data_template_Proposal.xls

Also, please forward this email to colleagues who also might be interested!

Best regards,

Stefan Pauliuk, PhD
Assistant professor for sustainable energy and material flow management
Faculty of Environment and Natural Resources
University of Freiburg
Tennenbacher Str. 4, D-79106 Freiburg, Germany
phone +49-761-203-98726
www.indecol.uni-freiburg.de/en

POST from Dr. Dombi Mihály,

Dear Colleagues!

The membership of the Socio-Economic Metabolism section of International Society for Industrial Ecology will be probably interested in the call for papers attached to my letter. CASES (Change and Adaptation in Socio-Ecological Systems) is an open access interdisciplinary journal that deals with the interrelations of human beings with ecosystems in sustainable land use and land development.

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SPECIAL ISSUE ON SIZE OF THE SOCIETY – LINKAGES BETWEEN MATERIAL FLOWS AND STOCKS OF SOCIO-ECONOMIC METABOLISM

GUEST EDITORS:
Mihály Dombi, University of Debrecen, Hungary (Coordinating Editor)
Luis Inostroza, Technische Universität Dresden, Germany
Dominik Wiedenhofer, Alpen-Adria University, Institute of Social Ecology Vienna, Austria
DESCRIPTION

Socioeconomic metabolism research has been developing intensively in the last decades. Methods and tools of different temporal and spatial analyses were successfully established and applied by a broadening scientific community. Recently, one of the paths providing a deeper understanding of sustainability problems and resource requirement in particular, has been the joint analysis of material stocks and flows. Results have revealed an extremely high physical amount of stocks, relative to flows, in societal systems thus material stocks may intensely influence or even determine the resource use. From the perspective the Special Issue on the “Size of the Society” will focus on (but will not be restricted to) the following subjects:

• Accounting for material flows and stocks of the socioeconomic metabolism
• Role of stocks in the socioeconomic metabolism
• Stocks and flows of food supply chain
• Urban metabolism

Growing material requirements of the global society performs as the main driver of unsustainable development paths. Utilization of increasing amounts of natural resources will lead to significant changes in the ecosystem, to which adaptation capacity is uncertain. This special issue will include submissions from the meeting “The Size of The Society – International workshop on linkages between material flows and stocks of socio-economic metabolism” (Debrecen, Hungary, January 27-28, 2017) and is open to contributions from other researchers dealing with these topics. Articles submitted to CASES Special Issue will deal with theoretic issues and evidences for crucial role of material stocks and flows in the socio-ecological systems.

JOURNAL INFORMATION, HOW TO SUBMIT & DEADLINE: April 15, 2017

CASES (Change and Adaptation in Socio-Ecological Systems) is an interdisciplinary journal that deals with the interrelations of human beings with ecosystems in sustainable land use and land development. Socio-Ecological Systems are a leading and internationally approved concept for understanding, describing and modeling the complex human-nature environment. By focussing on socio-ecological systems, we open a wide view on many complementary disciplines that help us to develop a vision of the world of tomorrow. Feel invited to join and share your ideas!

http://www.editorialmanager.com/cases/default.aspx

The authors are kindly invited to register at CASES paper processing system and submit their contribution using a special track established for this Special Issue (Size of the Society). All papers will go through CASES high standards, quick, fair and comprehensive peer-review procedure. In case of any questions please contact the Coordinating Editor Mihály Dombi or the Journal Editor, Christine Fürst.

As an author of CASES Special Issue Size of the Society on you will benefit from:
 transparent, comprehensive and fast peer review managed by our Guest Editors
 efficient route to fast-track publication and full advantage of De Gruyter Open e-technology
 no publication fees
 free language assistance for authors from non-English speaking regions

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Yours sincerely,
Mihály Dombi

Dr. Dombi Mihály
adjunktus
Debreceni Egyetem
Gazdaságtudományi Kar
Közgazdaságtan Intézet
Környezetgazdaságtan Tanszék
+36/52-508-444/88024

Mihály Dombi, Ph.D.
professor assistant
University of Debrecen
Faculty of Economics and Business 
Institute of Economics
Department of Environmental Economics
+36/52-508-444/88024

New Year and new SEM Section Board

Happy New Year everyone!

Back in June 2015 we announced the results of the ISIE-SEM Section Board election, which saw a mixture of familiar and new names take the reins of the Socio-Economic Metabolism section.

The 2015–2017 SEM Section Board is:

Gang Liu

Kazuyo Matsubae

Daniel B Müller

Barbara Reck

Heinz Schandl

Hiroki Tanikawa

Heming Wang

Helga Weisz

and today we can advise that the following people have agreed to take on particular roles:

Chair: Helga Weisz 
Vice-chair: Gang Liu 
Secretary: Kazuyo Matsubae 
Treasurer: Hiroki Tanikawa 

Thank you and congratulations!

2016 promises to be an exciting year for industrial ecology practitioners and students, with several conferences planned:

ISIE Americas Meeting 
(Bogota, Colombia – May 2016)

2016 Industrial Ecology Gordon Research Conference and Seminar
(Vermont, USA – June 2016)

ISIE Socio-Economic Metabolism and Asia-Pacific Conference 
(Nagoya, Japan – September 2016)

Gordon Research Conference in Industrial Ecology 2016

Opportunities for the critical decade – decoupling well-being from environmental pressures and impacts

Abstract

The second wave of industrialization and urbanization in many developing countries, and continuing economic growth and consumption in industrialized countries, have led to an acceleration of natural resource use, climate change and a suite of related environmental impacts. The supply chains for natural resources have become more complex and it is harder today to gain knowledge about the environmental footprint of certain products and processes. While the industrialization of developing countries has lifted millions out of poverty it has also contributed to increased global environmental change. To reverse this trend, and to allow the global economy to stay within the limits of the Earth’s resources and ecosystems, the new sustainable development goals call for economic activity and consumption and production processes to be underpinned by large investment and appropriate policy settings to guide decoupling of economic activity from environmental pressure and impacts. This opens a huge window of opportunity for industrial ecology to deliver the knowledge base to transition the current economic pattern to sustainable consumption and production. Industrial ecology concepts and tools support creating sustainable value chains for products and services, to build human settlements and design industrial systems to be maintained with lower material and energy throughput and with fewer emissions. For new industrial ecology technologies and practices to become economically viable and socially acceptable it will require new policy settings and business decisions supported by institutions and governance arrangements that encourage and drive innovation and experiments that ultimately serve decoupling. This conference will investigate the newest insights from the science of industrial ecology to support technological solutions, policy innovation and new business models for sustainable development. This is a critical decade for reconciling human development and environmental protection and we explore the contribution industrial ecology can make.

The 10^th biennial Gordon Research Conference on Industrial Ecology (GRC-IE) will be held at the Stoweflake Conference Center, Stowe, Vermont, June 19 to 24, 2016. A companion meeting for graduate students and post-doctoral researchers, the Gordon Research Seminar on Industrial Ecology (GRS-IE), will be held in conjunction with the GRC-IE. 

Please see the websites for more information:

2016 Gordon Research Conference on Industrial Ecology

2016 Gordon Research Seminar on Industrial Ecology  

Heinz Schandl 

CSIRO, Australia

2016 GRC Conference Chair 

Section Board election results announced

THANK YOU to everyone who stood as a candidate in the recent ISIE-SEM Section Board election, and thanks too to everyone who voted.

We called for candidates in early April 2015 and by 12 May 2015 eleven people had indicated a willingness to stand for the Section Board election. Candidates' statements were emailed out to members of the SEM section on 12 May, and on the same day members were sent a link to vote, and advised that voting would close at midnight on Tuesday 2 June 2015 (Australian Eastern Standard Time). We ended up with a total of 52 people voting. We asked three international colleagues, who were not candidates for the election, to oversee the election process and confirm the results.

Based on the votes received the eight members of the 2015–2017 SEM Section Board will be:

Gang Liu

Kazuyo Matsubae

Daniel B Müller

Barbara Reck

Heinz Schandl

Hiroki Tanikawa

Heming Wang

Helga Weisz

Congratulations!

First announcement of ISIE SEM Asia-Pacific conference in Nagoya in 2016

Planning for the next ISIE Socio-Economic Metabolism/Asia-Pacific conference is now underway! It will be held in Nagoya, Japan.

Dates: 28–30 September 2016

Venue: Nagoya University, Japan

Website: http://isiesemap2016.org

Chair: Professor Hiroki Tanikawa (Nagoya University, Japan)
Co-Chair: Professor Tsuyoshi Fujita (NIES, Japan)

Hiroki TANIKAWA

Head of Global Environmental Leader Program, NUGELP

Graduate School of Environmental Studies,

Faculty of Engineering, Dept. of Env. and Civil Eng.

Nagoya University, JAPAN

Upcoming elections of SEM section board – call for nominations

We would like to invite your nominations for the upcoming elections of our section board. Please suggest suitable candidates for the board by 19 April 2015 by email to heinz.schandl@csiro.au and karin.hosking@csiro.au.

Please make sure that nominated candidates are happy with their nomination and also submit a short statement of less than 300 words describing the candidate and her/his motivation for candidature.

Board elections are planned to be held in early May 2015. You will receive a ballot around that time. We look forward to receiving your nominations and to your participation in the board elections.

Heinz Schandl

SEM section leader

World Economic History Congress in Kyoto, Japan in August 2015

The upcoming World Economic History Congress in Kyoto, Japan from 3 to 7 August 2015 features a session on the potential for socio-economic metabolism research in economic history. The session is entitled 'Long run economic growth and the environment: international comparison from a socio-metabolic perspective' and is organised by Iñaki Iriarte Goñi (Zaragossa University) and Fridolin Krausmann (Inst. of Social Ecology, Vienna). It invites empirical papers presenting results from case studies investigating patterns and trends of material and energy flows or comparing different countries or regions. It will also be open to papers discussing concepts, sources and methods. Please see the call for papers for Session S20042 at the conference web page (www.wehc2015.org/second_call.html) or contact fridolin.krausmann@aau.at for more information. The deadline for submitting abstracts to the session organisers is 15 March 2015.

Fridolin Krausmann
Institute of Social Ecology, Vienna

Summer Research Scholarships (for Undergraduate and Master's level students) at the University of Queensland

In pursuit of pursuing collaborative activities, you or your students might be interested in Summer Research Scholarships (for 6 to 8 weeks between November 2014 and February 2015) for projects in Industrial Ecology, Circular/Green Economy, Life Cycle Assessment, Sustainable Consumption and Production, Cleaner Production, Green Supply Chains, Sustainability Science and Engineering and other environment related topics. Applications for the 2014-2015 Summer Research Program will close at 5pm Saturday 30 August 2014 (Australian time). Possible projects are listed at www.gpem.uq.edu.au/summer-research

This is only open to senior undergraduate and master's level students regardless of nationality and country of origin.

Read more details about the summer scholarship program at www.uq.edu.au/uqadvantage/summer-research

Please feel free to forward this to any student who may be interested.

(Thanks to Dr Anthony Halog of the University of Queensland for sharing this information)

Melbourne Conference 2014 website launched!

The joint 11th International Society for Industrial Ecology (ISIE) Socio-Economic Metabolism section conference and the 4th ISIE Asia-Pacific conference will be held in Melbourne, Australia from Monday 17 to Wednesday 19 November 2014. The conference topic is Industrial Ecology in the Asia-Pacific Century: Interdisciplinary science for building sustainable industrial systems and human settlements.

We’re delighted to announce that the conference website is now live at http://wp.csiro.au/isie2014/ and accepting registrations and abstracts. More information will be added as it gets closer to the conference; we are currently negotiating with several hotels (in a range of price brackets) and hope to offer accommodation suggestions soon.

Hope to see you in Melbourne in November 2014!

Best wishes from the organisers, Heinz Schandl, Sarah King and Tsuyoshi Fujita

Call for papers: JIE special issue on 'Frontiers in Socio-Economic Metabolism Research'

The Journal of Industrial Ecology is pleased to announce a call for papers for a special issue 'Frontiers in Socio-Economic Metabolism Research'. 

For the full call for papers, please go to http://jie.yale.edu/JIE_cfp_SEM.

Research in and understanding of socio-economic metabolism (SEM) has grown rapidly in the last two decades. This special issue will explore the discourse between industrial ecology, environmental science and engineering, political and social ecology, human geography, ecological economics, and urban ecology and will examine SEM as a guiding analytical framework for analysing global environmental change and globalisation.

The Journal of Industrial Ecology is an international peer-reviewed bimonthly, owned by Yale University, headquartered at the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies and published by Wiley-Blackwell.  It is the official journal of the International Society for Industrial Ecology.

Submission deadline: 1 April 2014

Sincerely,
Heinz Schandl (CSIRO)
Yuichi Moriguchi (Tokyo University)
Daniel Mueller (NTNU) 
Guest editors 

Gordon Research Conference ‘Transforming the Industrial Metabolism’ in Italy, June 2014

The forthcoming Gordon Research Conference on Industrial Ecology ‘Transforming the Industrial Metabolism’ chaired by Helga Weisz (vice chair Heinz Schandl) will be held in Lucca, Italy from 1 to 6 June 2014. 

The GRC is always a great opportunity for intensive dialogue testing the frontiers of the IE research field and a very rewarding experience for all participants. The focus on industrial metabolism and process of transforming systems of consumption and production of this GRC may well especially appeal to socio-economic metabolism section members. 

Applications to attend the GRC must be submitted by 4 May 2014 at the latest. Early applications are recommended as some meetings become full before this deadline. The conference program will be available in early December at www.grc.org/programs.aspx?year=2014&program=industeco.

Save the date ...

We are pleased to announce that the next ISIE Socio-Economic Metabolism section conference will be held from 17 to 19 November 2014 at the Melbourne Convention Centre in Melbourne, Australia. The conference will be organised by the CSIRO and will be hosted jointly with the ISIE Asia-Pacific meeting.

Industrial Ecology in the Asia-Pacific Century: Interdisciplinary science for building sustainable industrial systems and human settlements

11^th SEM Conference and 4^th ISIE Asia-Pacific Conference

Conference co-chairs: Heinz Schandl (CSIRO Ecosystem Sciences), Sarah King (CSIRO Materials Science and Engineering), and Tsuyoshi Fujita (NIES).

We will announce a conference website shortly and launch a call for abstracts by 30 November 2013.