This paper provides recommendations for assessing the criticality of materials (metals and non-fuel minerals), including the need for context-dependent assessment methods, providing a framework for conducting criticality assessments. Materials criticality captures concerns over the accessibility of materials, as the product of assessing a material's 'supply risk' and the impact of a supply restriction. Through a review of selected studies, problems with criticality assessments are discussed, highlighting how these become particularly important when the results of assessments are used in decision making. Considering how the results of criticality assessments are used in decision making highlights how criticality exhibits some of the characteristics of a 'complex context'. Building on predefined attributes of effective decision support in complex contexts, recommendations are made on how these problems can be addressed to better assess criticality in the future. These also include building on metric-based assessment methods by developing scenarios of future material supply and demand.

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This paper presents an approach to Ecodesign based on the management of environmental business risks, which are defined as 'stakeholder responses to environmental impacts with the potential to cause harm to business objectives'. Case studies are used to demonstrate the approach, with a particular focus on the management of critical materials. The paper concludes that by using risk, environmental considerations can be integrated into design decisions at Rolls-Royce, although the method contains significant uncertainties. In particular, the paper highlights the complexity of both assessing the supply risk of a material and how this could translate into an impact on the business. The paper also discusses how the risk model could be expanded to address other environmental business hazards.

Aero engine designs can have a life time of over 45 years, which is long enough for the understanding of environmental problems to change significantly. This places the aero engine designer in a position of uncertainty, as unforeseen environmental problems could affect the viability of a design. ‘Risk’ is used to describe future uncertainties that can lead to undesirable consequences. This paper presents a framework for environmental risk management that allows the designer to answer the question: what is the risk to a design from its environmental impacts over the life cycle? The framework provides a process for turning complex environmental business hazards into a form that can be used to develop mitigating actions within the design process. The paper demonstrates the framework through two examples and discusses findings, leading to conclusions on what is required to implement the framework into a business.