The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the transition to a low-carbon and circular economy, realising resource-efficiency, and ensuring resource supply security are now core goals for most countries in the world. These ambitions require transformations with regard to the economies’ use of natural resources, and the resulting emissions and waste. For these goals to be realized there is a need for a robust information base regarding the current and future demands the economy has for natural resources. Ideally such an information system links physical and economic information about industry sectors, product flows and stocks, and material flows and stocks, all a coherent classification that allows using this information in forward looking models. Such an information system would allow for forecasting resource demand, economic implications of resource supply problems, and provide a deep understanding of the societal metabolism of products and materials, including the structure of urban mines.