Prospectus

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Material Flow Analysis II

Course
2023-2024

Admission requirements

This course is an elective module for the joint degree MSc Programme on Industrial Ecology.
Students should have completed the course Material Flow Analysis I (MFA I).

Description

This course concentrates on advanced understanding and usage of material flow analysis (MFA) in various settings, with a focus on how material flows and stocks change over time. Students that take MFA I are highly encouraged to continue to this course, as together they provide a comprehensive up-to-date knowledge of the topic.

Building upon and expanding the concepts and contents of the course MFA I, in this course we into the practical and theoretical details of MFA as a headlining tool for sustainability in the domains of resource and waste management, circular economy, decoupling, material efficiency, services provisioning, critical materials, and material stock accounting, among others.

The main focus in this course is dynamic MFA, which is increasingly used for estimating and analyzing time series of past flows and stocks; future material demand & supply, stock accumulation, outflows and recycling / urban mining potentials; understanding time dependencies and lock in effects; quantifying service provision; emissions and other impacts over time; and other temporal dynamics of material flows and stocks at multiple scales.

Course objectives

In MFA II, students will gain a comprehensive understanding and ability to employ dynamic MFA, including:

  • To design advanced MFA research questions and apply dynamic MFA to answer them in case studies.

  • To model stock-driven and flow-driven dynamic MFA models, hybrid models, and their applications in Python.

  • To interpret, describe, and communicate MFA results using indicators, visualizations, etc. to stakeholders and decision makers.

  • To assess, interpret, and critically evaluate contemporary research that uses material flow analysis.

  • To Become familiar with current developments, case studies, and frontiers of dynamic MFA modelling.

Timetable

You will find the timetables for all courses and degree programmes of Leiden University in the tool MyTimetable (login). Any teaching activities that you have sucessfully registered for in MyStudyMap will automatically be displayed in MyTimeTable. Any timetables that you add manually, will be saved and automatically displayed the next time you sign in.

MyTimetable allows you to integrate your timetable with your calendar apps such as Outlook, Google Calendar, Apple Calendar and other calendar apps on your smartphone. Any timetable changes will be automatically synced with your calendar. If you wish, you can also receive an email notification of the change. You can turn notifications on in ‘Settings’ (after login).

For more information, watch the video or go the the 'help-page' in MyTimetable. Please note: Joint Degree students Leiden/Delft have to merge their two different timetables into one. This video explains how to do this.

Mode of instruction

Weekly meetings involving lectures, roundtable discussions, in-class practice sessions, and workshops. Weekly self-study through individual and group assignments using real case studies and simulated scenarios.

Assessment method

  • Weekly individual and group exercises throughout the course

  • Individual final project, including a presentation, python code, and short report

Reading list

Recent publications from the MFA literature, centered around state-of-the-art peer-reviewed articles of case studies, reviews, and methodological advancements.

Registration

From the academic year 2022-2023 on every student has to register for courses with the new enrollment tool MyStudyMap. There are two registration periods per year: registration for the fall semester opens in July and registration for the spring semester opens in December. Please see this page for more information.

Please note that it is compulsory to both preregister and confirm your participation for every exam and retake. Not being registered for a course means that you are not allowed to participate in the final exam of the course. Confirming your exam participation is possible until ten days before the exam.

Extensive FAQ's on MyStudymap can be found here.

Contact

Coordinator: Tomer Fishman
Other involved teachers: Janneke van Oorschot and Sebastiaan Deetman

Remarks

This course is open for students of the MSc Industrial Ecology (joint degree TU Delft and Leiden University). Students can register for the course and exam via uSis.