Evaluation of the impacting factors on sustainable mining development using the grey-decision making trial and evaluation laboratory approach

Abstract

Due to great effect of mining operation on environment and dependent sides, paying attention to the aspects of sustainable development (SD) is important. A conjugation of Grey theory and Decision-Making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory (DEMATEL) is able to find out cause and effect relations among the triple mining SD components and their effective factors. Grey-DEMATEL approach has been used in order to effectively quantify indicators of sustainable development of a copper mine located in south east Iran. This systematic approach transformed the quantitative and qualitative information into a analogous scale and measured the interrelationships among the SD components and their factors. Hierarchical Grey-based DEMATEL compensated the incomplete and uncertain environmental and socio-economic information. The obtained results indicated that social component with an R value of 10 is relatively strong direct influencer on the other components and the economic component is the least direct influencer with R= 8.49. Among the social impacting factors, employment of local work forces is the most important factor that needs to be consider with sustainable development objectives.