Energy and Mineral Resources Data Bases

Grenon, M. & Grubler, A. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7814-4990 (1983). Energy and Mineral Resources Data Bases. IIASA Collaborative Paper. IIASA, Laxenburg, Austria: CP-83-002

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Abstract

These proceedings contain a selection of papers dealing with energy and mineral resources data bases, given at the Fourth IIASA Resources Conference. This conference in fact was organized at the crossing of three different evolutions:

The first line of events was an IIASA series of Resources Conferences, aimed at a better understanding of world energy resources. The first conference, in 1975, was devoted to the Methods and Models for Assessing Energy Resources. The second one, in 1976, jointly organized with UNITAR, dealt with the Future Supply of Nature Made Petroleum and Gas; and the third, in 1977 in Moscow, covered Coal Resources (all of them published in the Pergamon Proceeding Series).

The second evolution was a growing concern at IIASA, and equally at many other institutions as expressed during these earlier Resources Conferences, about resource data collection, handling, processing and utilization. To build models is one thing; to feed them with the appropriate data is another.

Finally, it was clear that energy can be less and less isolated from other resources which are required for its development, such as water, land, human resources and, of course, mineral resources. Some new energy resources, such as solar, will be highly material intensive. This is just one example of the growing systems aspects between energy and minerals and/or materials.

All of these concerns led to the organization of this conference. In fact, it was organized as a two-part conference, the first (more technical) part on energy and mineral resources data bases, documented in this publication; the second part on a related subject -- the systems aspect of energy and mineral resources -- with the objective to provide a forum to discuss the increasing interdependencies and interrelations between energy and mineral resources, but equally to put the papers dealing with data bases in the right perspective: namely, that these data bases should not be considered isolated from each other, but rather from a perspective of integrative (or systems) studies of energy and mineral resources. This aspect and its resulting requirements for data base development is discussed in a number of papers contained in these proceedings.

Regarding these proceedings on Energy and Mineral Resources Data Bases, it is clear that the last years have seen a lot of interesting developments. Maybe the most important was that the first data bases were developed with their own software. It was, of course, suited to the special needs or concepts of the developer (not necessarily to those of the user), but very specific.

Today, many sophisticated Data Base Development Systems are commercially available, which permit us to concentrate more on the data itself than on their handling. Surprisingly, if we consider the enormous amount of studies which have been devoted during the last decade to the energy problem, only a few have dealt with energy resources -- although these will shape any energy future -- and still less to energy resource data bases. This apparent deficiency, as well as the time factor involved in design, development, implementation and continuous updating (i.e., the building and maintenance of such data bases is a long term activity), explains why we considered it useful to make the papers presented at this conference available to a broader public, despite a certain delay in the publication, which we sincerely regret. However, the data bases presented in these proceedings are practically all still actively pursued and accessible, and cover the most relevant developments in the field, so that the Editors hope that this publication constitutes a good contribution for assessing the state of development, and availability, of energy and mineral resources data bases. It should be considered less as an end point, than rather as a starting point.

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