Mining projects, as with many other extractive activities, result in divergent opinions during the planning process which may trigger conflict. Early understanding of stakeholders’ priorities can help with the design of better projects while reducing sources of potential conflict. The objective of this article is to present a rule-based method for decision support to be used in the first stages of the project to identify disagreements in the form of potentially conflictive criteria. The method proposed defines four attributes that should be evaluated for the different relevant criteria subject to potential conflict: the importance of the criterion, the perceived risk, the fairness, and the affected side’s willingness to make dialogue. These attributes are used to construct a rule-based system that can assess the degree of sensibility to conflict for each criterion. The application of this rule-based approach is explained using information from a real past conflict in Chile, where nine criteria were considered, four key decision makers were interviewed and 81 rules were created. The output given by the rule-based system was compared with the conflict degree given by the four decision makers. Results show that in 44.4% of the responses the rank level was the same, in 44% there was a slight subestimation and in 11% an overestimation of the criterion conflictive level. The method proposed incorporates new aspects into the analysis of sources of potential conflict and is simple enough for an anticipatory screening of potential disagreements around the criteria. In addition, this type of precautionary approach in the earlier stages of project appraisal can contribute to a better project design and a constructive industry-community dialogue.

与许多其他开采活动一样，采矿项目在计划过程中会导致意见分歧，这可能会引发冲突。对利益相关者优先事项的早期了解可以帮助设计更好的项目，同时减少潜在冲突的来源。本文的目的是提出一种基于规则的决策支持方法，该方法将在项目的第一阶段中使用，以潜在冲突标准的形式识别分歧。建议的方法定义了四个属性，这些属性应针对可能发生冲突的不同相关标准进行评估：该标准的重要性，感知到的风险，公平性以及受影响方进行对话的意愿。这些属性用于构建基于规则的系统，该系统可以针对每个标准评估冲突的敏感程度。使用来自智利过去一次真实冲突的信息来解释这种基于规则的方法的应用，该智利考虑了九项标准，对四位关键决策者进行了采访，并创建了81条规则。将基于规则的系统给出的输出与四个决策者给出的冲突程度进行了比较。结果表明，在44.4％的响应中，等级级别是相同的，在44％的响应级别中有轻微的低估，在11％的评价中是标准冲突级别的高估了。所提出的方法将新的方面纳入潜在冲突源的分析中，并且足够简单，可以预期地筛选围绕标准的潜在分歧。此外，