Method

Most figures in the atlas are a source's own. A few are computed by the atlas from sourced figures. This page gives each of those in words. Nothing is modelled or estimated to fill a gap.

Shares and concentration

Share of world output: a country's amount divided by the larger of the source's world total and the sum of its listed rows, times 100. Sources round their totals, so the rows can add up to slightly more than the printed total.
Top-3 share: the sum of the three largest country shares.
HHI: the sum of the squared country shares (0 to 10,000). Rows such as "Other countries" and withheld values are not given to any country, so where they exist the figure is a lower bound.
One source at a time. A share, a rank or a concentration figure always comes from one source table. Figures from two sources are shown side by side and never averaged.

Figures computed across materials

Midstream gap: HHI of refining minus HHI of mining, for the same year, each computed from the country shares in the source table (sum of squared percentage shares; a lower bound when part of world output is not attributed to a country).
Coverage: mines: Share of world mine production (latest year in the source) that lies in countries where the atlas has at least one mine or brine operation on record for that material.
Coverage: processing: Share of world refinery production (latest year) that lies in countries where the atlas has at least one processing plant on record for that material. Not computed where no open refining series exists.
Coverage: owners: Share of world mine production (latest year) that lies in countries where at least one facility record for that material names an owner or operator.
Coverage: assurance: Share of production at sites on a public assurance list. No such list is ingested yet.
Known unknowns: Countries that the source table lists as producers, where the atlas has no facility of the matching kind on record. They mark missing data, not missing industry.

Sites, duplicates and companies

Sites come from a USGS compilation for Latin America and the Caribbean that describes 2014, the national surveys of Australia (plants, mines, critical-mineral deposits), Canada (mines, smelters, refineries, critical-mineral projects) and Sweden (mines in operation and significant prospects), a 2022 database of coal and metal mines, and mine areas mapped by OpenStreetMap volunteers (marked as estimated). A deposit or a project is not a mine and is never counted as one. Processing plants in Asia, Africa and Europe are mostly missing. A missing facility means it is not in these sources, not that it does not exist.

Same site in two sources: two records of the same kind that share a material are treated as one site when they lie within 2 km of each other, or within 15 km and share a distinctive word in their names. Two sites side by side that name different companies stay apart. Nothing is deleted: the record of the lower-ranked source keeps its page and points to the other.
Deposits and projects are never merged into a mine or a plant and never counted as one.
Companies: A company is linked to a site or a listed plant only where the source prints an operator or owner whose name, without legal forms such as Ltd. or S.A., equals the company's name in Wikidata. Nothing is matched on similarity or on part of a name, and a name that two companies share is not linked. The other names a Wikidata item gives count as the company's name. Where GLEIF lists an entity as a company's subsidiary, a record that prints that entity's name is linked to the company as 'through a subsidiary'. A link is a name match, not verified ownership, and a site without a link may still belong to a company in this file under a name no source connects to it.

Scenario tools

Missing output = the country's share × the cut.
Share after = a country's remaining output ÷ (100 − missing output) × 100.
Increase the others need = missing output ÷ the sum of the other listed countries' shares × 100.
Share without the country = a producer's share ÷ (100 − the country's share) × 100.
Output needed to replace it alone = (the producer's share + the country's share) ÷ the producer's share.
Primary input = 100 − recycling input rate.
Change in primary input = (rate today − rate tried) ÷ (100 − rate today) × 100.

This is arithmetic on one source table, not a forecast. It leaves out prices, stocks, substitution, new mines and how fast anyone could react. Scenario tools

Live figures

Chokepoints: Average daily transits over the seven days up to the latest day in the source, against the average over the same seven weekdays 52 weeks earlier. Change = (now − baseline) ÷ baseline.
Earthquakes: Each earthquake of magnitude 4.5 or more in the past seven days is compared with every mine and plant on record. A site is listed when the great-circle distance between it and the epicentre is 100 km or less. Distance to the epicentre says nothing about shaking or damage at a site: that depends on depth, ground and construction.

What the atlas does not do

It does not estimate a missing value, and never turns a missing value into zero.
It does not give an overall score to a country, a company or a site.
It does not forecast, and it does not advise.