A review of methods to trace material flows into final products in dynamic material flow analysis: From industry shipments in physical units to monetary input–output tables, Part 1

Abstract Dynamic material flow analysis (dMFA) is widely used to model stock‐flow dynamics. To appropriately represent lifetimes, recycling potentials, and service provision, dMFA requires data about the allocation of economy‐wide consumption different end‐use products or sectors, that is, product stocks, in which accumulates. Previous estimates this only cover few years, countries, groups. Recently, several new methods for estimating were proposed, so far lack systematic comparison. We review systematize five tracing into inflow‐driven discuss their strengths limitations. Widely on industry shipments physical units have low spatio‐temporal coverage, limits applicability across countries years. Monetary input–output tables (MIOTs) are available coverage makes them a valuable source approximate end‐uses. find four distinct MIOT‐based methods: consumption‐based, waste MFA (WIO‐MFA), Ghosh absorbing Markov chain, partial Ghosh. show when applied given MIOT, methods’ underlying models yield same results, with exception method, involves simplifications. For practical applications, MIOT system boundary must be aligned those dMFA, removal flows, sector (dis)aggregation, re‐defining specific intermediate outputs as final demand. Theoretically, WIO‐MFA, modified produces most accurate results it excludes massless transactions. In part 2 work, we compare empirically suggest improvements aligning MIOT‐dMFA boundaries.