Identification of material flow systems: Extensions and case study.

The paper consists of two main parts. The first part is concerned with different aspects of mathematical modeling of material flow systems for the linear static case. The problems considered are the description of the model class, data reconciliation, identification of subsystems and the analysis of system properties relevant e.g. for simulation. In the second part an application of the modeling tools proposed in the first part to a study on the metabolism of phosphorus in an Austrian region is given.

Identification of material flow systems.

Material Flow Analysis (MFA) has become an important instrument in environmental science and pollution research. In this paper, we look at the MFA problem as a particularly structured system identification problem. Special emphasis is given to the linear, static case, where we describe a procedure for reconciliating the flow measurements and for estimating the unmeasured flows and the transfer coefficients by taking into account a priori restrictions such as balance equations.