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As the global economy continues to evolve and human society’s resource demands grow, the strategic significance of mineral resources becomes increasingly pronounced. The competition for mineral resources extends beyond primary minerals and encompasses the entire industrial chain. This article, from the perspective of the industrial chain, defined the boundaries of the critical mineral resource industrial chain as the whole industry chain of exploration and mining-smelting and processing (transportation)-production-industrial utilization-recycling and reuse. We defined the availability of critical mineral resources in terms of each link of the industrial chain, emphasizing the critical roles played by different segments of the industrial chain. Building upon existing research methods on mineral resource availability, we identified 20 factors that influence the availability. These factors were categorized into six dimensions: geological, economic, technological, geopolitical, regulatory, and social aspects. Furthermore, we defined the industrial chain links that they directly affect, and constructed the indicator system of the availability of critical mineral resources from the perspective of different links. In the process of the systematic review, we found that research on critical mineral resource availability from the industrial chain perspective still has shortcomings in terms of its implication, secondary supply, multi-link nexus, and model development and utilization. We proposed four major frontier directions: (1) The new connotation of critical mineral resource availability from the perspective of industrial chain. (2) The novel construction of the relationship between primary resource and secondary resource availability under the background of resource challenges. (3) The coupling relationship of multi-link availability of the whole industrial chain of critical mineral resources. (4) The construction of the availability database and research model of the whole industrial chain of critical mineral resources.

The vulnerability of mineral resources supply is constantly increasing due to geopolitical and other factors. Mineral resources are important raw materials and the propagation of supply risks will lead to significant impacts on the economic system. Assessing the supply risks of mineral resources, and predicting the propagation processes, paths, and impacts of supply risks are important research topics that have attracted widespread attention from scholars both in China and internationally. This article summarized the progress of research on the assessment of supply risks and the propagation of supply risks from the international/national levels to the enterprise/product levels and from the single link to the industry chain and supply chain. The assessment of supply risks and the propagation of supply risks are important components of supply risk formation mechanism. This article laid out formation mechanism for different types of supply risks, such as trade risk and environmental risk, and proposed a framework of supply risk prevention mechanism from four perspectives: supply, technology, environment and price. On this basis, we proposed a research framework for supply risks, which consists of five parts: quantification of supply risks, measurement of supply risks, formation of supply shocks, dynamic simulation of supply shock propagation, and formulation of policy recommendations. We further discussed the urgent issues that need to be addressed. Finally, we proposed three frontiers and challenges in the field of supply risk research: “how to further enhance the sustainable supply capacity of mineral resources”, “how to improve the resilience of the mineral industrial chain”, and “how to measure the macroeconomic losses caused by shocks on enterprise-level supply chain networks”.