Abstract
To move towards sustainable development, the mining industry needs to identify better mine water management practices for reducing raw water use, increasing water use efficiency, and eliminating environmental impacts in a precondition of securing mining production. However, the selection of optimal mine water management practices is technically challenging due to the lack of scientific tools to comprehensively evaluate management options against a set of conflicting criteria. This work has provided a solution to aid the identification of more sustainable mine water management practices. The solution includes a conceptual framework for forming a decision hierarchy; an evaluation method for assessing mine water management practices; and a sensitivity analysis in view of different preferences of stakeholders or managers. The solution is applied to a case study of the evaluation of sustainable water management practices in 16 mines located in the Bowen Basin in Queensland, Australia. The evaluation results illustrate the usefulness of the proposed solution. A sensitivity analysis is performed according to preference weights of stakeholders or managers. Some measures are provided for assessing sensitivity of strategy ranking outcomes if the weight of an indicator changes. Finally, some advice is given to improve the mine water management in some mines.
Highlights
The last two decades have witnessed the global mining industry moving towards sustainable development, which is characterized as “technically appropriate, environmentally sound, financially profitable, and socially responsible” [1,2,3]
Considering this research gap, this paper presents a case study of the evaluation of sustainable water management practices in 16 mines located in the Bowen Basin in Queensland, Australia
In order to compare water management practices in heterogeneous sites, we proposed a conceptual framework with a hierarchical criterion structure
Summary
The last two decades have witnessed the global mining industry moving towards sustainable development, which is characterized as “technically appropriate, environmentally sound, financially profitable, and socially responsible” [1,2,3]. As a result of rapid increase in mineral production, intensifying competition with other water uses, locations of mine sites, and significant climate variability, there is strong pressure of securing water supply to the mining industry. We need to identify better mine water management practices for reducing raw water use, increasing water use efficiency, and eliminating environmental impacts in a precondition of securing mining production. Considering this research gap, this paper presents a case study of the evaluation of sustainable water management practices in 16 mines located in the Bowen Basin in Queensland, Australia. We propose a conceptual framework for developing a decision problem hierarchy and the AHP-fuzzy TOPSIS method for evaluating mine water management practices.
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
