The Canonical Data Model for the Real Capital Framework

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Revolutionizing how nations manage their wealth, measure public asset health, and formulate national budgets.

An integrated data architecture bridging bridges conventional public finance, asset management engineering, and Earth system science into a single, cohesive framework.

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Moving from a finance-first focus to a resources-first focus

The Canonical Data Model (CDM) for The Real Capital Framework is an integrated data architecture designed to transform how nations manage their wealth, measure public asset health, and formulate national budgets. It bridges conventional public finance, asset management engineering, and Earth system science into a single, cohesive framework.

At its core, the CDM is a universal translation interface—often described as a “universal power adapter” for data. Governments manage four fundamental forms of real wealth, defined as anything used to produce goods and services for society without being used up:
Natural Capital: Ecosystems, water cycles, land, minerals, and climate regulation.
Built Capital: Man-made infrastructure, housing, transport networks, energy grids, and machinery.
Social Capital: Public institutions, legal systems, organizations, and codified societal knowledge.
Human Capital: Human capabilities, education, skills, health, and workforce readiness.

Instead of evaluating assets solely by monetary value or financial depreciation, the CDM adopts international asset management standards (ISO 55001) and measures Service Maturity—a 1–5 scale evaluating whether an asset cohort has the physical, structural, or operational capability to fulfill necessary public needs.

How to Apply the CDM

The CDM is operationalized through a modular, relational database structure:

A. Core Asset Register (`AssetPortfolio`) & Extensions

All national capital stocks are registered in a master table (AssetPortfolio) containing core attributes like steward organization, location, criticality score, and current maturity level. Capital-specific extension tables capture domain-specific metrics (e.g., carrying capacity for natural capital, condition index for built capital, organizational strength for social capital, capability levels for human capital)

B. The Translation Layer (`EnumMapping` & `ReconciliationRules`)Continuous Support

Different government agencies use conflicting classifications (e.g., the EU Nature Restoration Regulation uses a 3-state condition status, while the EU Habitats Directive uses a 4-state status). The CDM acts as a “diplomat, not a dictator”: its EnumMapping table translates native agency data into the canonical 1–5 maturity scale while preserving the original raw data for auditability and lineage

C. Lifecycle Activities & Asset Objectives

AssetManagementObjective: Defines the required non-monetary service output (e.g., “potable water for 2 million citizens”) and target maturity level.
AssetPerformanceRecord & AssetHealthIndicator: Quantifies performance deficits (demand vs. delivery) and physical degradation mechanisms.
LifecycleActivity: Categorizes interventions into ten standardized types (ACQUIRE, CREATE, ENHANCE, MAINTAIN, RESTORE, OPERATE, RENEW, DECOMMISSION, RISK_MITIGATE, STUDY)

D. Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) Module & Real Resource Limits

Instead of assuming money is the primary constraint, the MMT module introduces RealResourceConstraint. Before funding is approved, the system checks whether the economy possesses the physical materials, labor skills, and ecological capacity to complete the activity without triggering sectoral inflatio

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Module C links national budget lines directly to biophysical limits:
EconomicActivity (NACE): Classifies budget items by economic sector.
HumanNeed: Maps spending to fundamental societal needs (e.g., Nutrition, Mobility, Shelter) based on Max-Neef and Earth Commission justice thresholds.
PressureAttribution: Attributes specific biophysical pressures (e.g., CO? emissions, nitrogen fixation, land conversion) to economic activities.
BudgetAllocation: Generates a Boundary-Adjusted Budget annex for Parliament, displaying every budget line in both currency and biophysical pressure unitsExperience the fusion of imagination and expertise with Études Architectural Solutions.

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How the RCF’s CDM Benefits Society

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Reframes Public Spending around Stewardship:

Shifting the budget question from “Can we afford this in money?” to “Do we have the real resources—workers, materials, and ecological capacity—to deliver this outcome safely?

Creates an Auditable “Line of Sight”:

Establishes a transparent chain connecting every unit of currency spent to a lifecycle intervention, an asset cohort, an intended human outcome, and a planetary boundary limit

Eliminates Administrative Data Silos:

Integrates fragmented data systems without forcing agencies to abandon their specialized internal software or taxonomy codes.

Eliminates Administrative Data Silos:

Provides policymakers with the structural tools to identify high-pressure expenditures (such as fossil fuel subsidies) and reallocate resources toward boundary-restorative initiatives while safeguarding basic human needs.

Aligns National Economies with Planetary Health:

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FAQs

Q1: Why should we change how the national budget is made? Isn’t the current financial budget working fine?

Answer: Traditional budgeting treats the national government like a household, focusing almost entirely on financial solvency and asking, “Can we afford this in money?”. Under a CDM approach, money is understood as a tool to mobilize resources, while the true limits are physical and ecological. Focusing strictly on monetary balances obscures whether a nation actually possesses the skilled workers, raw materials, equipment, or environmental capacity to deliver vital public outcomes without causing inflation or ecological harm

Q2: What exactly is “Real Capital,” and how does it affect my daily life?

Answer:Real Capital refers to anything used to produce goods and services for society that is not used up in the process. It covers four essential areas that directly impact public wellbeing,

Natural Capital: Clean water, soil, forests, ecosystems, and climate regulation.

Built Capital: Housing, transport networks, energy grids, hospitals, and tools.

Social Capital: Public institutions, legal systems, and codified societal knowledge.

Human Capital: Public health, workforce skills, education, and community capabilities

Evaluating these capitals focuses on their maturity—that is, their physical capability to deliver reliable services to citizens over the long term

Q3: Under this new approach, does the government still care about inflation and overspending?

Answer: Yes, but the focus shifts to real-world limits rather than bank balances. Instead of tracking the financial deficit as the primary danger, the system uses real resource constraints and an InflationMonitoring process. If government spending attempts to hire more workers or purchase more materials than the economy physically has available, it creates price pressures. The CDM tracks these sector-specific price changes so policymakers can adjust spending pace or apply targeted tax offsets before harmful inflation occurs

Q4: If taxes aren’t used to “fund” government spending, why do citizens still have to pay taxes?

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Welcome to the home of the open source model for

We are developing an open-source framework for pre-budget analysis that integrates real resource constraints, human needs, and planetary boundary impacts into public financial decision-making. By connecting budget allocations to economic activities and environmental pressures, the framework makes the biophysical consequences of fiscal policy visible before spending decisions are made. The aim is to improve government decision-making by aligning fiscal policy with both resource realities and ecological sustainability.

Version 1.6.2 is the first public baseline release of the Real Capital Canonical Data Model. It establishes the core structure for representing real capital, its maturity, stewardship and relationship to financial allocations. It is released for public examination and practical testing. The model is not considered final, and the project invites proposals for improvement.

Why the model exists

Governments manage vast stocks of national wealth—forests, infrastructure, institutions, and skills—yet lack a common language to measure their condition, connect them to budgets, or assess their pressure on the Earth’s life-support systems. The Planetary Health Check 2026 diagnoses that seven of nine Planetary Boundaries are now transgressed, but it stops short of telling us which national budget lines are driving this pressure, or which human needs those expenditures serve.

The Solution: A Canonical Data Model for Real Capital

This site presents a Real Capital Canonical Data Model (CDM). It is a standardized framework designed to integrate the management, measurement, and budgeting of four capital types: Natural, Built, Social, and Human.

A CDM is fundamentally a translation interface. Just as a universal power adapter allows devices with different plugs to connect to a single socket, the CDM allows different authorities (EU, national, regional) to report data using their own enums, languages, and systems, and translate them into a common, comparable format.

The model is built on six architectural modules the ones not yet released are in red.

Core CDM: The master register of assets, objectives, activities, and financial allocations, aligned with ISO 55001.
Module A (MMT): Shifts the budget constraint from financial solvency to real resource availability.
Module B (Translation Layer): Bridges disparate source systems and authority enums.
Module C (Planetary Boundaries): Bridges Earth system science to fiscal policy.
Module D (Borden’s Tetrahedron): Operationalizes democratic provisioning via the ALE (Asset-Liability-Equity) dashboard.
Module E (Circularity): Captures the circular economy capability and performance of built capital.
Module F (Territorial Resilience): Grounds the model in the physical and fiscal reality of real estate and land use.

The Four Key Innovations

1. The Translation Layer (Module B)
Authorities speak different languages. The EU Nature Restoration Regulation uses a 3-state enum (Good, Not Good, Unknown), while the Habitats Directive uses a 4-state enum (FV, U1, U2, XX). The CDM formalizes an EnumMapping and ReconciliationRules layer. It accepts source data as-is, translates it to a canonical maturity scale (1-5), and preserves the original data for audit.

2. Maturity-Based Stewardship (Core)
Rather than valuing capital in money, the CDM measures Maturity—the capability of a capital stock to deliver necessary services. A highway at maturity level 2 (degraded) requires an ENHANCE or RESTORE activity to reach target level 4. This allows budget lines to be linked directly to physical interventions rather than abstract financial depreciation.

3. Module C: The Boundary-Adjusted Budget
Module C introduces five entities that connect national budgets to the Planetary Boundaries: EconomicActivity (NACE), HumanNeed, PlanetaryBoundary, PressureAttribution, and BudgetAllocation. This enables the production of a Boundary-Adjusted Budget—a parliamentary annex that reports every expenditure in both monetary and boundary terms (e.g., “This 3.2B SEK fossil fuel subsidy creates 18.5 MtCO?e of climate pressure”).

4. Module D: The ALE Dashboard
Borden’s four imperatives—Ecological Stability Guarantee, Full Employment Guarantee, Universal Basic Services, Universal Basic Assets—are operationalized via the Asset-Liability-Equity (ALE) dashboard. The asset_target (normative), equity_current (actual), and liability_gap (shortfall) are computed for each capital stock, enabling democratic deliberation over a structured, multi-unit dashboard rather than a single master number.

The Model – Definition of Real Capital

Real Capital is defined as:

Something that is used in the production of goods and services to society, but not used up.

Capital is necessary but not sufficient to provide services; it is utilised within a production system. The value of Real Capital cannot be expressed in money—only the investment needed to keep it mature.

The Four Capital Types

Capital Type	Definition
Natural Capital	The living layer we all rely on, the layer beneath our feet with minerals and substances from the lithosphere, and natural systems like the climate and water cycle.
Built Capital	All man-made things used to provide our basic needs: houses, roads, factories, equipment, tools, and systems like telecoms and payments.
Social Capital	Our organisations and institutions, including the knowledge and capability held within them.
Human Capital	What we as humans command in terms of strength, knowledge, insights, attitude, and capabilities.

Introduce the four capital types, the asset register, maturity, lifecycle activities and the relationship to budgeting.

03 · DOCUMENTATION

Read the baseline 1.6.2 documentation here

04 · PARTICIPATE

Help develop the model

Invite comments, questions, corrections, proposed changes and practical testing.

05 · GOVERNANCE

How the model is maintained

Explain ownership, administration, decision-making, versioning and the review process.

06 · RELEASES

Follow development

Provide the current release, previous releases, proposed changes and the development roadmap.

erDiagram
    AssetPortfolio ||--o{ AssetManagementObjective : "has"
    AssetPortfolio ||--o{ AssetPerformanceRecord : "has"
    AssetPortfolio ||--o{ AssetHealthIndicator : "has"
    AssetPortfolio ||--o{ AssetRisk : "has"
    AssetPortfolio ||--o{ LifecycleActivity : "has"
    AssetPortfolio ||--o{ AssetPressure : "experiences"
    AssetPortfolio ||--o{ AssetMaturityHistory : "tracks"
    
    LifecycleActivity }o--|| AssetPerformanceRecord : "targets (if performance)"
    LifecycleActivity ||--o{ FinancialResourceAllocation : "funded_by"
    LifecycleActivity ||--o{ RealResourceConstraint : "requires"
    LifecycleActivity ||--o{ InflationMonitoring : "monitored_by"
    
    AssetPressure }o--|| EconomicActivity : "caused_by"
    AssetPressure }o--|| UnitOfMeasure : "measured_in"
    
    RealEstate ||--o| AssetPortfolio : "hosts"
    RealEstate }o--|| Region : "belongs_to"
    Region ||--o{ LandUseProfile : "has"
    
    EnumMapping }o--|| AssetPortfolio : "translates"
    ReconciliationRules }o--|| AssetPortfolio : "reconciles"
    
    AssetManagementObjective }o--|| MaturityScale : "targets"
    AssetPortfolio }o--|| MaturityScale : "currently_at"

SELECT 
    a.official_name,
    (o.target_maturity_level - a.current_maturity_level) AS maturity_gap,
    apr.performance_gap,
    la.activity_description,
    la.target_entity_type,
    fra.allocated_amount
FROM AssetPortfolio a
JOIN AssetManagementObjective o ON a.asset_id = o.linked_asset_id
JOIN AssetPerformanceRecord apr ON a.asset_id = apr.asset_id
JOIN LifecycleActivity la ON a.asset_id = la.asset_id
JOIN FinancialResourceAllocation fra ON la.activity_id = fra.activity_id
WHERE (o.target_maturity_level - a.current_maturity_level) > 0 
  AND apr.performance_gap < 0
  AND la.target_entity_type = 'Maturity';