System Dynamics Modeling: A Prototype Technical-Economic Analyzation Tool for Supporting Sustainable Development in Operational Metal Mines

Technical-economic analyzation is critical to increasing a mine's economic benefits and saving mineral resources for its sustainable development. However, since the mining system has many technical-economic indicators that are connected and that respond to each other, it is not easy to determine mining production and operation performance when an indicator changes or when multiple indicators change. Thus, the complicated system of operational metal mining cannot be easily solved in a general way. In this paper, system dynamics (SD), an alternative approach that can qualitatively and quantitatively assess mining production and operation from a system analysis perspective, is employed. Taking the Sanshandao gold mine in China as the industrial research context, we built an SD model based on an integrated stock and flow diagram, which is derived from the identification of technical-economic parameters and the system conceptualization of causal loop diagrams, including four subsystems of geology, mining production, mineral processing, and financial. After establishing the equations and testing the model based on historical data, the SD model simulated with the PLE 6.3 software can be used as a decision support tool to calculate the simulation results in many scenarios. Monte Carlo simulation is also introduced to consider uncertainties in the assessment. In the future, development of the prototype SD model will continue, and it will be verified by many more case studies to be a useful alternative tool for decision-making to improve the actual processes and to support the sustainable development of metal mine production and operation.