Data assessment for northern mining transportation decision-support models

加拿大北部拥有丰富的自然资源，开发这些资源预计将成为未来几十年经济增长的主要驱动力。与此同时，北方的社区和高度脆弱的生态系统正在经历快速变化的气候的不成比例的影响。这些因素给成本高昂的交通运输投资决策带来了独特而重大的不确定性，包括支持采矿活动的投资。与Agnico Eagle Mines有限公司类似的利益攸关方需要高质量的分析工具，以告知他们在这些敏感的北方环境中的交通和基础设施的决策过程。目前支持交通投资规划的分析工具不适合北方地区极其复杂的挑战。在这个项目中，我们的目标是与Agnico Eagle直接合作，对他们的数据进行评估，以衡量他们的数据对支持交通基础设施决策模型的有效性。我们还将开发这些模型的初步框架--使用期权分析--以定量地正式化气候条件、环境影响和自然资源价格对Agnico Eagle交通基础设施决策的随机投入。这些决定可以包括在什么条件下(气候条件、环境缓解、资源价格等)。一套交通设施可能比另一套更划算。该模型支持灵活的决策，因为这些不确定性和风险的来源会随着时间的推移而变化。该项目的预期成果是建立一个广泛的数据评估和框架，以建立一个专门为Agnico Eagle在加拿大北部地区的交通需求设计的分析工具，特别是将我们的注意力集中在他们的Meadowbank业务上。该项目将量化Agnico Eagle如何在高效运营与环境和社会责任之间取得平衡。该项目将为北部矿业运输基础设施分析提供新的应用，并在对加拿大北部至关重要的跨学科领域培训2HQP。

Northern Canada holds vast natural resources, and developing these resources is projected to be a major driverof economic growth over the next several decades. At the same time, the north's communities and highlyfragile ecosystems are experiencing disproportionate impacts of a rapidly changing climate. These factorsintroduce unique and significant uncertainties into decision-making on enormously costly transportationinvestments, including those that support mining activities. Stakeholders akin to Agnico Eagle Mines Limitedneed high-quality analysis tools to inform their decision-making processes on their transportationinfrastructures in these sensitive northern environments. Current analysis tools to support transportationinvestment planning are unsuited to the northern context's remarkably complex challenges. In this project, weaim to work directly with Agnico Eagle to perform an assessment of their data, in order to gauge thesufficiency of their data to support transportation infrastructure decision models. We will also develop thepreliminary framework of these models - using options analysis - to quantitatively formalize the stochasticinputs of climate conditions, environmental impacts, and natural resource prices on Agnico Eagle'stransportation infrastructure decisions. These decisions could include under what conditions (of climateconditions, environmental mitigation, resource prices, etc.) one set of transportation facilities may be morecost-effective than another. The model supports flexible decisions as these sources of uncertainty and riskchange over time. The expected outcome of this project is an extensive data assessment and framework to buildan analysis tool specifically designed for Agnico Eagle's transportation needs within the northern Canadiancontext, specifically focusing our attention to their Meadowbank operations. The project will quantify howAgnico Eagle can balance efficient operations with environmental and social responsibilities. The project willcontribute a new application for northern mining transportation infrastructure analysis, and train 2 HQP in aninterdisciplinary area of key importance to Canada's north.