As mineral resources are extracted, the working environment in a mine is constantly changing. Far from being a static process, mining is by definition a dynamic process that is continually moving forwards within the earth’s crust.

Like every other EU country, Austria is only able to cover part of its needs for mineral raw minerals using its own reserves.

According to Section 185 of the Mineral Raw Materials Act (Mineralrohstoffgesetz, MinroG) the Federal Minister for Agriculture, Regions and Tourism has to keep priority notices on all mining rights, together with survey maps of those areas to which they refer, and to make certain data freely available on the Internet.

The Austrian minerals strategy is to be understood as the essential instrument to transpose the national minerals policy into reality successfully. It is the priority objective to ensure and to improve the supply of the Austrian economy with minerals and commodities. Similar to the Raw Materials Initiative of the European Commission the Austrian raw materials strategy is based on three pillars:

The Austrian Minister of Economy prepared the Austrian Mineral Resources Plan on request of the National Council as a national master plan to secure supply of mineral resources and to serve as a planning basis for future mining activities with the federal states and municipalities in relation to their specific Needs.

In the annual publication "WORLD MINING DATA" production figures of 63 mineral commodities from 168 countries are summarized and statistically evaluated. This information is available in tabular form.

The mineral materials included in this report are arranged in five Groups:

Mineral Raw Materials are mineral constituents of the earth's crust which are of economic value. In the most comprehensive sense this includes the so-called "mine output" as well as the output from processing at or near the mines (for instance, the up-grading of ores to concentrates).

Mineral raw materials and ore bodies with significant variations in valuable mineral content have been calculated to obtain the actually useable mineral content, e.g. highly variable Fe-contents of iron carbonates and iron oxides.

Regional and Sectoral Groups of Mineral Raw Materials .

Collection of data relating to mineral raw materials has been carried out through evaluation of questionnaires sent to the National Committees of member countries of the World Mining Congress as well as to other bodies such as Embassies, Foreign Trade Representatives etc.

The Interactive Raw Material Information System IRIS Online is the updated web version of the Metallogenic Map of Austria (Metallogenetischen Karte von Österreich) 1:500.000, which was originally published in 1997, and the accompanying explanatory publication entitled “Manual of Deposits of Ores, Industrial Minerals and Energy Raw Materials” (Handbuch der Lagerstätten der Erze, Industrieminerale und Energierohstoffe).