THE RESOURCE SUPPLY SYSTEMDR. DAVID C ELLIOTT

WHAT IS RESOURCE MANGEMENT?

A possible definition of what it is:

“An active process with the objective of providing the timely and efficient supply of a required Final Product to Users.”

Not project-specific.

A user does not usually know or care where a product comes from.

A Final Product is provided by a Resource Supply System (RSS) with many sources, activities, and contingencies.

SOME TERMINOLOGY

RESOURCE, a general term for a quantity that may be material, such as copper, or immaterial electricity.

PRODUCT is a quantity that may be an:

Intermediate Product, at any point in a resource chain of activities, such as copper ore or concentrate, but is not in a form desired by a user

Final Product, desired by and supplied to a user, such as metallic copper.

• Etc.

COMPONENTS OF AN RSS

DEMAND

AGENTS are the actors that carry out the activities that result in a product.

SOURCE

FINANCING, the lifeblood of the RSS

PHYSICAL SYSTEM

BACKGROUND against which RSS activity is carried out PRODUCT

Resulting in SUPPLY

HOW THE COMPONENTS FLOW: A CONCEPTUAL RSS

The heavy black box is the interface between the RSS and the larger WORLD economic system in which it exists.

DEMAND and SUPPLY are the entry and exit points for the RSS.

USE and USE WASTE boxes are outside the RSS that may feed back into it as potential sources, a concept for the Circular economy

RSSWORLD

WORLD

RSS

SOURCE The origin of a product. It may be:

Natural

Subsurface, such as a metallic ore body.

Surface such as water, sunlight, wind, etc.

Anthropogenic, the residue of human activity, such as biowaste or mine tailings.

Technical and scientific activity that identifies new types of uses and sources.

May be KNOWN or UNKNOWN

May or may not be commercial.

AGENTS, PHYSICAL SYSTEM, AND FINANCE

AGENTS, make the decisions on, and carry out, resource supply activities, including:

PHYSICAL SYSTEM AGENTS Producers: exploration, development, recovery. Transporters: pipelines, rail, tankers, power lines, etc. Processors: convert the initial raw source into a final product.

FINANCING AGENTS Banks, securities market, bonds, private financing, self financing, etc.

BACKGROUND Agents carry out their activities against a Background series of

contingencies:

Entitlement

Legal and regulatory contingencies

Political contingencies

Social and environmental contingencies

These are largely extrinsic to, and beyond, the control of a physical system and financing agents.

They must be satisfied for a project to proceed

THE RSS AS A COMPLEX SYSTEM

The diagram of an RSS in a previous slide is a simplified static snapshot of a single project.

In reality, each box can include many, often hundreds or more, agents or activities.

These are connected as a network, in which nodes represent the agents connected by links, that forms a dynamic, adaptive, complex system.

From https://www.solarwinds.com/NPM/SolarWinds

COMPLEX SYSTEM

Not just “complicated”.

Consists of many components that may interact.

Its behavior is difficult to predict because of non-linear interactions.

They have distinct properties beyond those of their components.

COMPLEX SYSTEMS The properties of complex systems have been extensively

studied (see References). They may:

Exhibit the “butterfly effect,” a dependence on initial conditions in which a minor change may result in significant non-linear, and unpredictable, difference in a later state.

Have emergent properties that are not apparent from the components considered alone.

Have cascading changes when a change in one component ripples through the system, causing unpredictable changes in other components.

Have abrupt critical changes in response to minor stimuli.

RMS: MANAGING THE RSS?

Resource management involves the identification and use of the “levers” in the RSS that may be manipulated with the intent of producing a desired result.

Most real-world RSS networks will have hundreds or thousands of dynamically interacting nodes and links, all with their own properties.

If the RSS is a complex system, how do you/can you manage it?

Some insight may be obtained from Network and Agent Based Models (ABM).

HOW TO STUDY A COMPLEX RSS

Flowcharts, which mainly illustrate sequential operations.

Networks, may have a high degree of complexity, and can be used to study the characteristics and dynamics of a resource supply system.

Agent Based Models (ABM) can simulate the actions and interactions of the individual components of an RSS to search for insight into the collective behavior of the system and agents.

WHAT NEXT?

This has been a very rapid and simplified overview.

I have a much lengthier and detailed report in preparation that I am still working on.

I plan to:

Build a network model with several sources, physical system agents, etc., to study its behaviour.

To use this as the basis of an Agent Based Model.

REFERENCESThere is a large literature. A few readily accessible starting ones are:

These Wikipedia articles provide overviews with links to many additional references:

Network science – Wikipedia

Agent-based model - Wikipedia

Complex system - Wikipedia

Arthur, W. B., 2021. Foundations of Complexity Economics. Nature Reviews Physics, Feb. 2021, Vol. 3 p. 136. Foundations of complexity economics | Nature Reviews Physics

Newman, M. E. J., 2003. The Structure and function of complex networks. SIAM Review 45. Extensive references. http://www-personal.umich.edu/~mejn/courses/2004/cscs535/review.pdf

NetLogo https://ccl.northwestern.edu/netlogo/ A free and powerful agent based modelling software package with an extensive models library.

The Santa Fe Institute has a wealth of information on complex systems, Home | Santa Fe Institute. This includes excellent free on-line courses.