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Our first edition!
Welcome to the first edition of the newsletter of MFA Tools. This newsletter keeps you posted about new tools and content on our website. Remember, our website is an open source initiative that is open to contribution by anyone. Feel free to share your thoughts and be in touch if you want to help out improving our website!
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Quick Status Update
Number of publications: 176
Public research projects: 2
OMAT datasets: 2 private datasets | 1 public dataset
Total lines of code: 13,590
www.mfa-tools.net | info@mfa-tools.net
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OMAT Launched
Our online tool to manage MFAs (the Online Material Flow Analysis Tool or OMAT) has been made publicly available! It was used in beta for private research but has now been made available to anyone interested. The software features a full set of tools that allow users to do the following:
- Instant loading of the Eurostat catalog of materials
- Option to define an own catalog of materials
- Full back-end administration including options to manage contacts, sources, and activities
- Option to use Data Quality Indicators
- Multiple scale use for data entry
- Comment and note taking that make it easier to understand and manage large datasets
- Automatic report generation including indicator graphs (DMI, DMC, DPO, etc), full data tables, breakdown of time spent, and others
OMAT is an ideal tool for a team of people working together, or for researchers interested in having 'project management' tools available for the back-end work of their MFA. OMAT is currently being used by Paul Hoekman for an urban scale MFA in South Africa and by a group of students working on an urban MFA in Barcelona as part of a class taught by associate professor Gara Villalba in the JEMES-CiSu masters program.
Full documentation is available here, and you can get started here!
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First public OMAT dataset loaded
We have taken the dataset from the research paper Resource Use in Small Island States by Fridolin Krausmann, Regina Richter and Nina Eisenmenger and loaded this into OMAT to easily show how the data looks. (Dataset used with permission). You can view the Iceland data here:
Iceland Data Set
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In the pipeline
We plan to grow and expand our website gradually but steadily. There are a couple exiting items in the pipeline that we plan to roll out early next year. Here is a preview:
Regional MFA Comparison: we have been analyzing regional MFAs to get a better overview of what is out there. The comparison includes general information on the type of study, the region of study and the year(s) of study, but the main focus is the comparison of indicators (DMI/TMI/TMR etc. per capita), and to contrast the different strategies that were used to collect the data.
New OMAT features: we are planning to include more datasets for public viewing. The paper previously mentioned also has also made available the dataset for Trinidad & Tobago and we plan to also load this data. Do you know of other datasets we can share? Let us know! Other new features in OMAT include the creation of a screencast and some new reports into the efficiency of the data collection process.
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Call for assistance
There are more things than the ones we can do ourselves! Why don't you join our efforts and help us make useful tools and information around MFAs available to the public! Here are a couple items on our wish list where we can use your support:
- A list of relevant journals, and preferably some background information about what kind of MFA publications are covered there.
- Revision of our collections by an expert and support adding missing publications.
- Testing and feedback of our OMAT tool, especially for use that differs from urban Eurostat-based MFAs
Also feel free to come up with other improvements for our website. Constructive criticism is always welcome! You can view our full wish list here: MFA Tools Wishlist.
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