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Risk management for mine closure: A cloud model and hybrid semi-quantitative decision method

International Journal of Minerals, Metallurgy and Materials Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Mine closure is associated with many negative impacts on society and the environment. If these effects are not rationally addressed, they would pose risks of mine closure. Thus, a risk management method is needed to mitigate these adverse impacts and address mine-closure issues. An integral framework for mine-closure risk management that includes risk assessment and risk treatment was proposed. Given the fuzziness and randomness of the transformation between qualitative and quantitative knowledge in the risk assessment process, a novel risk assessment method based on the cloud model was presented, which fully considers the uncertainty in risks themselves and in the reasoning process. Closed mine reutilization is an effective risk treatment option in response to the identified high risks, but it requires selecting optimal reutilization strategies for the successful implementation of the reuse plan. To this end, a hybrid semi-quantitative decision method is proposed to optimize decision-making. The results of a case study showed that this risk management methodology can help budget planning for risk treatment and provide an instructional framework to effectively reduce the negative effects of closed mines.

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Acknowledgements

This work was financially supported by the National Key R&D Program of China (No. 2018YFC0831800), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 71704178), the Beijing Excellent Talent Program (No. 2017000020124 G133), the Major Consulting Project of Chinese Academy of Engineering (No. 2017-ZD-03), the National Statistical Science Research Project by National Bureau of Statistics of China (No. 2017LY10), and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (No. 2020YQNY08). The authors also appreciate the experts’ helpful suggestions to improve the quality of this study.

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Correspondence to Bing Wang or Yong-Jin Zhang.

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Cui, Cq., Wang, B., Zhao, Yx. et al. Risk management for mine closure: A cloud model and hybrid semi-quantitative decision method. Int J Miner Metall Mater 27, 1021–1035 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12613-020-2002-7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12613-020-2002-7

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