It is a privilege to introduce the 19th International Symposium on Mine Planning and Equipment Selection – MPES 2010 Conference Proceedings. Throughout its history, MPES symposium has been recognised as the leading forums for promoting international technology transfer, with the main focus on all aspects of mine planning, as well as mining equipment.

The aim of selecting a specific mining method should be to maximize the safe and cost-effective extraction of an orebody whilst minimizing the environmental impact and effectively collaborating with the local community (social license to operate) so they can benefit long term from the mining.

‘Orebody modelling and strategic mine planning’ are arguably the backbone of our industry and represent an intricate, complex and critically important part of mining ventures. They have a profound effect on the value of a mine, as well as determining the technical plan to be followed from mine development to mine closure.
It is most gratifying to introduce the second revised edition of this Spectrum Series volume on the above topic, following the depletion of all copies of the first edition within about a year of its publication.

You can complete this training module in a self-paced environment or as a guided training course. You will use a variety of tools and functions within Deswik.Sched to complete the course.
This tutorial is a dual-purpose training module containing a mix of reading theory and practical exercis

Long-term production scheduling is a major step in open pit mine planning and design. It aims to maximize the net present value (NPV) of the cash flows from a mining project while satisfying all the operational constraints, such as grade blending, ore production, mining capacity, and pit slope during each scheduling period. Long-term plans not only determine the cash flow generated over the mine life, but are also the basis for medium- and short-term production scheduling. Mathematical programming methods, such as linear programming, mixed integer linear programming, dynamic programming, and graph theory,

The design of pushbacks in an open pit mine has a significant impact on the mine’s profitability. Automatic generation of practical pushbacks is a highly desirable feature, but current automatic solutions fail to sufficiently account for complex geometric requirements of pushbacks, including slopes, phase bench and bottom width, smoothness, and continuity. In this paper, we present a tool to fill this gap. Our proposed algorithm is based on modification of sets of blocks obtained by parametric optimization of the pit using a maximum flow method.

Common challenges associated with grade uncertainty involve failing to meet decisive operational targets, which include (among others) the following: ore tonnage sent to the mill, total metal processed at the mill, blending requirements on ore feed, total waste tonnage mined, maximum allowable proportion of potentially deleterious materials (e.g., toxic elements such as arsenic). These challenges reflect, to an important extent, the uncertainty involved in defining precisely the mineral grades in an ore deposit. <...>

The Global Optimiser used by Whittle Consulting has gone through three major versions to date. The first was based on the Milawa optimisation algorithm; it worked, but had many shortcomings. The second, known internally as ProberA, had a different approach to optimisation in that it used a series of random starting points and found the nearest local NPV maximum to each.

It is with great pleasure that I endorse Crimes Against Mine Planning by Mark Bowater. This book seeks to “call out” examples and themes of poor mine planning and mine management practices that have plagued many of us during our careers in mining.
The mining industry plays a very important role in the Australian economy, with billions of dollars of capital deployed, earning even more billions of dollars of tax and royalty generating revenue. Efficient allocation and use of capital and labour is at the heart of a successful mining operation and good quality mine planning is the key to unlocking the inherent value of an orebody by efficiently planning and scheduling the use of that capital and labour.

1. Beyond Naпve Optimisation 
2. Integrated Mine Evaluation — Implications for Mine Management
3. Using Real Options to Incorporate Price Risk into the Valuation of a Multi-Mineral Mine
4. Roadblocks to the Evaluation of Ore Reserves — The Simulation Overpass and Putting More Geology into Numerical Models of Deposits
5. Quantification of Risk Using Simulation of the Chain of Mining — Case Study at Escondida Copper, Chile
6. Integrated Strategy Optimisation for Complex Operations
7. Simulation of Orebody Geology with Multiple-Point Geostatistics — Application at Yandi Channel Iron Ore Deposit, WA and Implications for Resource Uncertainty