Online Material Flow Analysis Tool (OMAT)

The Online Material Flow Analysis Tool (OMAT) is a free, open source tool that can be used to undertake a Material Flow Analysis (MFA). More specifically, the goals of OMAT are:

• To make it easy for researchers to save a dataset either for an Economy-Wide EUROSTAT-based MFA, or for a dataset with datagroups defined by the researcher.
• To have a practical tool that helps with the logistics behind data collection, including keeping track of sources and providing a space for comments and discussion around each data point.
• To collaboratively work on the same dataset at the same time.
• To make it easy to share datasets with other researchers or with the public.

OMAT is similar to STAN in that it is free software and it is available for flow analysis. However, OMAT is based on an online platform which means that it is not necessary to install any program on the computer, and it can be used on any type of operating system. OMAT is furthermore focused on EW-MFA rather than Substance Flow Analysis.

Improved version launched!

In September 2014 we launched OMAT in its beta version to the public. We have been improving it ever since, and in February 2018 we have applied various upgrades to OMAT in order to improve navigation and data management. OMAT has been used by various groups at universities and the system is also used by individual researchers to manage their MFA. We invite you to start using it for your own MFA and to let us know if you have any questions or comments.

We invite programmers to join the development of this free service, and we invite researchers to either start a project now or get in touch with specific requests so that we can tailor the program to the need of people in the industry and get feedback from those who help us test the software.

Start your project View the documentation

Instruction videos

As part of our MOOC, we have developed several instruction videos for OMAT. Please find them below:

Usage in a classroom setting

In 2017, professor Gara Villalba and Paul Hoekman published an article in the Journal of Industrial Ecology on how OMAT can be used in a classroom setting, based on a project at the Autonomous University of Barcelona. From the abstract:

The main objective of this article is to introduce an open‐source, online software tool called OMAT as a teaching tool for performing economy wide‐material flow analysis (EW‐MFA) at urban or regional level in industrial ecology curricula. To that intent, we present a classroom and project activity that was developed for a masters‐level industrial ecology course offered by the Autonomous University of Barcelona. Insights are provided with regards to the outcome of the classroom exercise as well as lessons learned from both an academic and a software development point of view.

Read more

Development roadmap

• Online creation of projects
• Easy loading of all materials defined in the EUROSTAT method
• Option to load other material groups
• Option to differentiate between urban and national scales
• Data management
  • Multiple years
  • Comments/discussion options for each data point
  • Option to track time it took to get the particular data point
• Inclusion of Data Quality Indicators
• Inclusion of uncertainty
• Automatic calculation of indicators
• Automatic generation of graphs for the indicator trends
• Multiple users per project
• Option to share dataset with third parties
• Propose other features!

Screenshots

• Dashboard
• Data Groups
• List of Materials
• Specific Material
• Add Data Point
• Automatically generated indicators