NTR 'raw materials'

[pdez90]

Hi I looked for a definition of this online, but couldnt find any definition from a UN site. However I found this: https://stats.oecd.org/glossary/detail.asp?ID=1740 Natural resources are natural assets (raw materials) occurring in nature that can be used for economic production or consumption.

This is not an SDG term perse but its related to the Goal to the Sustainable Consumption and Production Goal

[pbuttigieg]

@pdez90 Thanks for retrieving the definition. What's the difference between an asset and a resource that should be represented in the SDGIO?

[pdez90]

Hi,

I got this definition of 'asset' from the UN Stats Division: An asset is a store of value representing a benefit or series of benefits accruing to the economic owner by holding or using the entity over a period of time. It is a means of transferring value from one accounting period to another. http://unstats.un.org/unsd/envaccounting/londongroup/meeting16/LG16_8a.pdf

I cant find a definition for resource. Il ask the SDG focal point tomorrow

On Thu, Feb 18, 2016 at 10:35 PM, Pier Luigi Buttigieg < notifications@github.com> wrote:

@pdez90 https://github.com/pdez90 Thanks for retrieving the definition. What's the difference between an asset and a resource that should be represented in the SDGIO?

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub https://github.com/SDG-InterfaceOntology/sdgio/issues/91#issuecomment-185883008 .

Yours Sincerely, Priyanka deSouza

[pbuttigieg]

Thanks! This distinction will be very helpful. It seems to me that an asset is some resource which confers "benefit" to its owner. The idea that it represents a benefit is a bit odd to me. I think it can be an agent in a process which provides its owner with more 'benefits'. Not sure what the distinction between 'owner' and 'economic owner' is yet, though.

[mark-jensen]

asset = An independent continuant under the control of some person or organisation which confers an economic benefit in some economic system.

Technically an asset is any entity that bears an asset role, which we also have a class for. But for tagging purposes, the actual entity bearing the role is what is relevant.

asset role = A role inhering in an independent continuant which is realized by conferring a economic benefit to the person or organization which controls it in some economic system.

[mark-jensen]

This links to discussion in #82

[pbuttigieg]

Natural resources are natural assets (raw materials) occurring in nature that can be used for economic production or consumption. https://github.com/SDG-InterfaceOntology/sdgio/issues/91#issue-134594561

So we need "natural asset" with a synonym or preferred label as raw material for now. More discussion in https://github.com/SDG-InterfaceOntology/sdgio/issues/82#issuecomment-184310872 and https://github.com/SDG-InterfaceOntology/sdgio/issues/94#issuecomment-185815834; the latter contains:

natural asset =def. An asset which is the result of or itself an environmental process that has not been substantially altered by human activity.

[mark-jensen]

natural asset with above def was added in https://github.com/SDG-InterfaceOntology/sdgio/commit/95f128d5b7afdeb5fc20826cccf4ec20f2e31670

I'll add the synonym annotation for now. As well as fix my previous uses of 'alternative term'. I had forgotten we previously agreed to 'synonym'.

@pdez90 Would you confirm if 'raw material' is the UNEP preferred label for natural asset, or if use of synonym is ok, or if there is some clear difference between the two?

[mark-jensen]

We are running into a problem here though, which I will take up in more detail in #82. asset is currently an independent continuant, but if we make natural asset a subclass, then an occurrent can also be an asset.

Also, the relationship between resource and asset now seems to be one of specialization, where the latter is a resource for which the benefit is economic or financial, i.e., it having value in an economic system.

[pbuttigieg]

We are running into a problem here though, which I will take up in more detail in #82. asset is currently an independent continuant, but if we make natural asset a subclass, then an occurrent can also be an asset.

True, based on the definitions coming in, it seems occurrents (and other entities like 'rights') are treated as assets too. Indeed, this would be the tangible and intangible asset divide:

Intangible assets are nonphysical resources and rights that have a value to the firm because they give the firm some kind of advantage in the market place. Examples of intangible assets are goodwill, copyrights, trademarks, patents and computer programs,[4] and financial assets, including such items as accounts receivable, bonds and stocks. Wikipedia: Asset

As this inferred class can have such broad membership, we can bump this up a level (to a subclass of entity; extreme, I know, but that's what it looks like) or create "material asset", "processual asset", etc. These would all be filled by inference as a [material entity, process] bearing an asset role. Also see https://github.com/SDG-InterfaceOntology/sdgio/issues/94#issuecomment-187746261

Also, the relationship between resource and asset now seems to be one of specialization, where the latter is a resource for which the benefit is economic or financial, i.e., it having value in an economic system.

I agree with this, but see https://github.com/SDG-InterfaceOntology/sdgio/issues/94#issuecomment-187754862

[mark-jensen]

As this inferred class can have such broad membership, we can bump this up a level (to a subclass of entity; extreme, I know, but that's what it looks like) or create "material asset", "processual asset", etc. These would all be filled by inference as a [material entity, process] bearing an asset role

A process can't bear a role.

It's the participants in processes that bear roles. The process realizes the role. I don't believe an education process, i.e., the process of being educated, is a resource, nor is some health care process. Is my cataract surgery a resource? But, rather, I think it's the systems that support such processes (indeed the material entities which compose such a system) which are the resource. My cataract surgery realizes the resource role which is borne by the health care system. The surgery process necessarily depends upon the system in some way.

Does that sound right? I did a quick draft of a diagram that can be expanded and refined to illustrate how we are putting this together. It is useful for #94 & #82.

I am not yet sure how ecosystem/environmental service, or any service for that matter, fits. How does healthcare service differ from healthcare process or healthcare system? I am leaning towards saying a service is the same as the system. It's the system that one has access to. We could expand the diagram to include access and and basic service, the inferred use of a resource, etc. Also need to figure out what kind of processes realize an asset role

[pbuttigieg]

A process can't bear a role...My cataract surgery realizes the resource role which is borne by the health care system. The surgery process necessarily depends upon the system in some way.

Quite right. This works and supports the intention behind many goals: you can't preserve a process which has value without preserving its underlying support systems: i.e. you can't sustain timber harvesting without sustaining the source forest(s).

But the issue remains: the wording we face in the literature deals with processes and material entities simultaneously. We have to create a union class which contains material assets (material entities that bear an asset role); processes which generate or increase the value of assets, or reduce the costs of some economic process; and more deontic entities whose realisation is of value in an economic system (e.g. rights).

This suggests that "processual assets" need their own defined, union class, along the lines of:

processual asset = A process which produces assets, increases the value of existing assets, leads to the realisation of non-material assets, or reduces the costs associated with some economic process.

• process and has output some asset
• or, more generally: process and has output some resource
• Also: process and has input some undesirable thing and 'has output' some not so undesirable thing

However, some valuable outputs are not assets (more like "benefits") and thus are not necessarily of direct economic value. We should be mindful of this and not restrict ecosystem service and related classes to the production of economic assets. There are cultural benefits and so on.

How does healthcare service differ from healthcare process or healthcare system? I am leaning towards saying a service is the same as the system.

I wouldn't say so. The system is a material entity (a forest, a water treatment system, a healthcare system), not a processual one. Systems or system parts can participate in processes (forest-mediated carbon fixation, waste processing, distribution of vaccines). Some of these processes are beneficial to humans and are thus services. If we avoid roles, we can create defined or union classes as above.

A service is a specialisation of a process: some process which "aids" or "benefits" humans (typically). Let's consider a couple of ecosystem services.

• production of clean drinking water: This would be a process with an output that is a resource.
• decomposition of wastes. Some of these processes have hazardous materials as inputs and non-hazardous materials as outputs. They could also output resources. In a way, this could be a superclass of "processual asset" which would be a specialise "benefit" to "asset"

[cfrancois7]

Here which gathered many definition of what is resources from different field of research or statistic administration. The paper is not free

Here the interesting part: Resource definition:

• Material Flow Accounting (Eurostat 2001) As raw materials: obtained from the environment (Fischer-Kowalski 1998)
• Material Flow Analysis (Baccini and Brunner 2012) 1) Materials and organisms in geosphere and biosphere 2) Built physical stocks in anthroposphere 3) Economic and technological know-how 4) Institutional equipment organize social entities and to cultivate knowledge
• SNA (UN 2008) Natural resources consist of naturally occurring resources such as land, water resources, uncultivated forests and deposits of minerals that have an economic value.
• SEEA (European Commission 2012) Natural resources include all natural biological resources (including timber and aquatic resources), mineral and energy resources, soil resources and water resources.

-FORWAST project (Schmidt et al. 2010) Material inflows from the environment to the technosphere.

• Life cycle assessment (ISO 2006) material or energy entering the system being studied that has been drawn from the environment without previous human transformation, or material or energy leaving the system being studied that is released into the environment without subsequent human transformation.