Derived metric methodology, version 1.0
Lithium production top-3 country concentration
Share of world lithium mine production supplied by the three largest producing countries in the USGS world production table, per year.
Specification
How the value is computed
Formula in plain words
The custom function top3_share_of_world over the whole component dataset, for each geography and period. A period with any component missing produces no value. Rounded to 1 decimal.
Components
| Label | Metric | Geography | Lag | Transform | Scale | Constraint |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| lithium-mine-production | Lithium mine productionlithium-mine-production, metric tonsObserved | same as the output | none | level, as stored | 1 | none |
- Combination
- Named function top3_share_of_world, evaluated once over the whole component dataset (it reads across geographies or records an assessment) and returning the observation ids it used.
- Missing data
- Skip the period: no value is produced unless every component is present. Nothing is interpolated or carried forward.
- Window
- None: each period stands on its own.
- Normalization
- None: the combined value is published in its own unit.
- Unit and rounding
- percent of world production. Rounded to 1 decimal, applied last.
- Default geography
- WLD
What has been computed
- Current values
- 2
- Geographies
- 1
- Periods
- 2, 2024 to 2025
- Last computed
- 2026-09-07 22:04 UTC
- Produced by
- version 1.0
Last verification
- Outcome
- success
- Run at
- 2026-09-07 22:15 UTC
- Examined
- 5101 derived values across all metrics, 5090 reproduced, 0 issues
- This metric
- 2 of 2 reproduced, 0 issues
Worked example
World, 2025
72.4 percent of world production
- Observation id
- 404808
- Formula version
- 1.0
- Source revision
- v1.0/01efc0fa95e5
- Computed at
- 2026-09-07 22:04 UTC
- Coverage
- 1 of 1 components (minimum 1)
- lithium-mine-production
- 290,000
Recorded with the value
{
"top3": [
{
"name": "Australia",
"value": 92000,
"geography": "AUS"
},
{
"name": "China",
"value": 62000,
"geography": "CHN"
},
{
"name": "Chile",
"value": 56000,
"geography": "CHL"
}
],
"top3_sum": 210000,
"world_total": 290000,
"countries_considered": 9
}4 observations
| Observation id | Metric | Geography | Period | Value | Source revision |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 263799 | lithium-mine-production | WLD | 2025 | 290,000 | MCS2026 |
| 263791 | lithium-mine-production | AUS | 2025 | 92,000 | MCS2026 |
| 263795 | lithium-mine-production | CHN | 2025 | 62,000 | MCS2026 |
| 263794 | lithium-mine-production | CHL | 2025 | 56,000 | MCS2026 |
Recompute by hand: The custom function top3_share_of_world over the whole component dataset, for each geography and period. A period with any component missing produces no value. Rounded to 1 decimal. Applying that to the rows above gives 72.4 percent of world production.
History
Version history
Version 1.0, effective 2026-09-07 00:00 UTCcurrent
Formula lithium-top3-concentration(year) = 100 * sum(top 3 country values of lithium-mine-production(year)) / lithium-mine-production(WLD, year)
Lithium production top-3 country concentration, version 1.0
Formula. For each year, take every country row of lithium-mine-production (the USGS world production table without the world total and without the "Other countries" residual), sort by value, sum the three largest, and divide by the USGS world total for the same year. Multiply by 100.
Units. Percent of world production.
Missing data. A year is computed only when the world total and at least three country rows exist. Withheld country values are absent, not zero, so a withheld large producer would understate the share; the metadata lists the three countries used. No interpolation or smoothing.
Reading it. Higher means more of the world's supply comes from three countries and a disruption in any one of them matters more. Direction is lower is better for resilience. The share is by mine output, not by refining or by ownership, so it can understate concentration in the processing stage.
Revision. Recomputed after every ingestion of the component; a changed component value produces a new observation row and earlier rows are kept.
Source revision label. v1.0/<component release> so a value can be traced to the USGS release it was computed from.