New technology contributions to the sustainable development of mineral resources: Developing a holistic stochastic simulation - optimization paradigm

地球矿产资源的可持续发展对社会至关重要;它促进负责任地开采原材料和金属，支持新兴经济体的发展需求，同时解决环境问题。人们普遍承认，主要的不确定因素影响到矿物资源的开发和利用，特别是来自供应（地质）、技术（采矿、加工和环境）和市场（商品价格、汇率）的不确定性。*** 在此背景下，我们正在进行的研究为矿山规划、设计和生产调度（SMPDS）建立了一个新的随机建模和优化范式，重点关注单个矿山及其生产相关方面。成果包括：（a）用于量化供应不确定性的新的高级建模框架，称为高阶空间模拟以及基于多点和多尺度小波的地质统计模拟方法;（B）新的复杂随机采矿优化公式，包括市场不确定性等其他几个方面;（c）探讨几种算法方法，以解决（a）和（B）中的主要计算问题;最后，（d）从既定的采矿区块经济价值驱动的采矿优化方法转向新的随机优化方法，这种方法只考虑这些区块的地质/岩石特征，如品位、材料类型和有害材料。我们的研究出版物概述了科学和工程的进步和贡献，以及矿产储量的可持续利用，通过更好的财务业绩承担社会责任，以及技术上可行的客观决策。 拟议的5年研究计划旨在建立在我们以前的研究结果，以及调查新的研究领域，需要进一步发展的理解，知识和技术。新的研究计划遵循我们的随机SMPDS范式，在更广泛的背景下，“矿山生产，产品开发和市场交付”，并旨在明确包括主要的环境因素。随机模拟优化的不同方面包括开发一个包罗万象的随机供应满足需求SMPDS优化框架，以及进一步开发高阶地质统计模拟框架，以量化SMPDS中考虑的矿产资源的不确定性。

The sustainable development of Earth's mineral resources is critical for society; it promotes the responsible extraction of raw materials and metals and supports the developmental needs of emerging economies while simultaneously addressing environmental concerns. It is widely acknowledged that major uncertainties affect the development and utilization of mineral resources, particularly from supply (geology), technical (mining, processing and environment), and market (commodity prices, exchange rates) uncertainty. *** Within this context, our ongoing research has established a new stochastic modelling and optimization paradigm for mine planning, design, and production scheduling (SMPDS) that has focused on single mines and their production-related aspects. Outcomes include: (a) a new advanced modelling framework for quantifying supply uncertainty, termed high-order spatial simulation as well as multi-point and multi-scale wavelet based geostatistical simulation methods; (b) new complex stochastic mine optimization formulations that include several other aspects, such as market uncertainties; (c) exploration of several algorithmic approaches to address the major computational issues in (a) and (b); and lastly, (d) shifting from the established mining block economic-value-driven mine optimization approaches to new stochastic optimization methods that consider only the geological/rock characteristics of these blocks, such as grades, material types and deleterious materials. Our publications from this research outline advances and contributions to science and engineering, as well as the sustainable utilization of mineral reserves, social responsibility through better financial performance, and technically defendable objective decision-making.**** The proposed 5-year research program aims to build upon our previous findings, as well as investigate new research areas that require further developments in understanding, knowledge, and technology. The new research program follows our stochastic SMPDS paradigm in the broader context of “mine production to product development and market delivery”, and aims to explicitly include major environmental elements. The different aspects of a stochastic simulation-optimization include the development of an all-inclusive stochastic supply-meets-demand SMPDS optimization framework and the further development of the high-order geostatistical simulation framework, as needed to quantify the uncertainty of mineral resources considered in SMPDS.*********