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

地球矿物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要，同时解决环境问题。人们普遍认为，主要不确定因素影响矿产资源的开发和利用，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)的不确定因素。*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例，该范例侧重于单个矿山及其与生产相关的方面。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)新的复杂随机矿场优化公式，包括市场不确定性等其他几个方面；(C)探索解决(A)和(B)中主要计算问题的若干算法办法；(D)从已有的矿块经济价值驱动的矿场优化方法转向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的随机优化方法。这项研究的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，以及在技术上可辩护的目标决策。*拟议的5年研究计划旨在以我们之前的发现为基础，并调查需要在理解、知识和技术方面进一步发展的新研究领域。新的研究计划遵循我们的随机SMPDS范式，在“矿山生产到产品开发和市场交付”的更广泛背景下，旨在明确包括主要环境因素。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需SMPDS优化框架和进一步开发高阶地质统计模拟框架，以量化SMPDS中所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.*********