Objective Approach to the Criticality Assessment: A Case-Based Analysis

Resource problems rose in these decades have been forcing governments and companies to detect materials to be secured. To quantify the degree of potential risk for each material, criticality assessment has been developed by... [ view full abstract ]

Resource problems rose in these decades have been forcing governments and companies to detect materials to be secured. To quantify the degree of potential risk for each material, criticality assessment has been developed by including various criticality components which covers a wide range of aspects such as geology, geopolitics, technology and economy. To support one’s understanding and decision making, many criticality components employed for the assessment are normalized and integrated into a couple of indices e.g. supply risk and vulnerability. These indices can be further integrated into a single score, so that it would be convenient in showing priority order in resource strategies.

Integrated indices obtained through the hierarchical analyses may serve as a supporting materials in decision making, as long as the hierarchical structure is established adequately. However, the structuring procedures such as selecting criticality components and setting weighting factors are rather subjective so far. The goal of this study is to provide objective knowledge base through the case-based analysis. To conduct the case-based analysis, we surveyed over 400 of the past affairs and incidents relating to a supply disruption. For each affair, following information are investigated: type of metals, date and period, country and area, causes of the affair, and influences of the affair. Our survey shows that the metals which supply disruption are reported the most are copper, nickel, lead, zinc and gold. For those over 400 affairs, natural disaster, accident, labor strike, metal price down and policy dispute are the dominant causes of supply disruption. The analyses with cross-tabulation clarify some features on a specific metals/countries/period; for example, during the years 2005-2010, metal price down had a stronger effect on supply disruption on the back of worldwide economic downfall. These objective approach based on the case-based analyses would develop the criticality assessment framework as a more convincing tool for supporting decision making.