Executive Vice President & Chief Technology Officer, Euronet Worldwide
Search every verified Martin Bruckner interview, podcast appearance, and on-the-record quote — each transcript cross-checked by AI and human review to confirm speaker identity. Dr. Martin Bruckner presented the FABIO (Food and Agriculture Biomass Input-Output) model during a September 2020 webinar hosted by the Global Land Programme's working group on telecoupling. He described FABIO as a multi-regional input-output database covering 191 countries and 130 commodities, including agricultural products, crops, processed items, and livestock. Bruckner noted that the database uses both mass and value allocation, and stated his personal preference for value allocation when attributing responsibility, as he said higher-value products drive production, while mass allocation reflects actual physical flows. He mentioned that the model's paper had been published and that the database would be made available online within weeks, with codes for building hybrid tables accessible on GitHub. Bruckner also discussed current applications of FABIO, including an analysis of international cotton supply chains and embodied water stress, which he said showed that only one-third of the cotton harvest is lint while the rest is used as animal feed. He stated that the team had funding to continue maintaining and updating the database, and that it could be updated as new FAO data is published. Bruckner added that no uncertainty analysis had been conducted yet, but that animal products were expected to have higher uncertainties, and that the team planned to provide more information on uncertainties to users. He also mentioned ongoing collaboration with the Stockholm Environment Institute on sub-national versions of the database.
“Fabio comprises 191 countries plus rest of world and 130 commodities, including 127 agricultural commodities, 64 crops, 32 processed products, 14 animal groups, and 17 livestock products such as different kinds of meat, milk, hides, and fats.”
“The Fabio database currently comprises multi-regional input-output tables using mass allocation and value allocation, with options such as energy allocation that can be implemented later.”
“For non-academic uses, especially the online tool will be useful where people can play around and find out the results for different products and countries, but most non-academic users will likely rely on interactive visualizations provided online.”
“The Fabio paper presenting the purely physical multi-regional input-output tables was published recently, and the database will go online hopefully within the next two to six weeks; the hybrid tables will not be published but the codes to build them are available on GitHub.”
“We will provide the Leontief inverse online so users can perform multiplier type analysis by multiplying it with environmental extensions of interest.”
“For attribution of responsibility, I personally prefer value allocation because the higher value product drives production, whereas for studying global physical flows of commodities or embodied energy, mass allocation should be used as it reflects actual mass flows.”
“We are in contact with people from SEI and hope to collaborate on sub-national versions of the database to combine with the Tres database for a more complete view of supply chains.”
“The model can show differences between mass and value allocation in flows between countries, for example countries exporting lots of mass but getting little value.”
“We have not done uncertainty analysis yet, but some parts of Fabio, especially animal products, are expected to have higher uncertainties; we plan to provide users with more information about uncertainties later.”
“We have the funding to continue maintaining and updating Fabio, and with our codes, it is simple to update the dataset as new FAO data is published, allowing us to keep the model alive and current.”
The GLP working group on telecoupling held its first webinar, a session on the freely-available FABIO model, on September 18, ...
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