Year: 2026
Type: article
Abstract: Critical raw materials underpin modern economies and are indispensable for digitalisation, clean-energy transitions, and advanced manufacturing. At the same time, their supply systems are increasingly exposed to geological constraints, market concentration, geopolitical tensions, environmental and social pressures, and climate constraints. This paper develops a geology-informed, system-level framework for understanding resilience in mineral-based critical raw material supply systems. By integrating concepts from economic geology, mineral economics, and resilience theory, it analyses vulnerabilities across upstream, midstream, and downstream segments of mineral value chains and examines how disruptions distribute through the integrated system. Building on this analysis, the paper distinguishes between short-term engineering resilience, focused on buffering, redundancy, rapid recovery, and longer-term system resilience, which emphasises adaptation and structural transformation. A portfolio of resilience strategies is mapped across value-chain stages and time horizons, highlighting the complementary roles of technological innovation, diversification, governance, and sustainability. The framework is applied to selected critical raw materials, including cobalt, lithium, and rare earth elements, illustrating how material-specific geological, technological, and market characteristics shape vulnerability and resilience. The study demonstrates that resilient critical raw material supply systems require layered, material-specific strategies that combine short-term stabilisation with longer-term adaptive and transformative capacity.
Source: Ore Geology Reviews
Author: Lingli Zhou
Institutions: Durham University, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam
Language: English
Subfield: Mechanical Engineering
Field: Engineering
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: gold
Estimated APC paid: $3,310
Funder: Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam
OpenAlex ID: W7204023265