Adaptive open-pit mining planning under geological uncertainty

This research project developed an adaptive stochastic optimisation approach for multi-period production scheduling in open-pit mines under geological uncertainty, and compared it to existing two-stage method. new rolling-horizon updates the model each time period as information becomes available. Numerical tests carried out earlier on open-pits of different sizes showed that, average, policy gave better results than non-adaptive approach. The metric used was percentage gap between those that would be obtained if true block grades were perfectly known. paper extends this work two ways: firstly, by introducing a second — dollar-value difference NPV generated with perfect knowledge orebody given other methods. is average approach, but not all geostatistical simulations uncertainty. innovation analyse when outperforms one. depends drill-hole spacing. For widely spaced grids, statistically at 95% confidence level. very close spacings, both approaches converge toward knowledge.