Abstract

Strategic mine planning involves optimizing resource extraction to achieve economic, environmental, and social objectives. However, only a few frameworks offer a unified approach that simultaneously employs systematic indicator selection and weightless trade-off evaluation. This study addresses these issues by proposing a comprehensive framework for integrating sustainability into strategic mine planning, named SustMine. SustMine introduces two key advancements: (1) a rigorous, systematic, criteria-based process for selecting site-specific sustainable development indicators (SDIs), and (2) a weightless evaluation strategy that utilizes Pareto front analysis to construct composite indices. This allows decision-makers to identify non-dominated (optimally balanced) alternatives without relying on arbitrary or subjective weighting schemes, ensuring that trade-offs among all three dimensions are optimally balanced. A case study applying SustMine to the evaluation of 20 production schedules shows that five of these are on the Pareto optimal front. This validates SustMine's utility in identifying robust and sustainable long-term strategies.

Department(s)

Mining Engineering

Second Department

Engineering Management and Systems Engineering

Publication Status

Open Access

Comments

Saudi Arabian Cultural Mission, Grant None

Keywords and Phrases

Hybrid case study; Indicator selection criteria; Long-term planning; Mine design evaluation; Multi-objective optimization; Sustainability assessment

International Standard Serial Number (ISSN)

2524-3470; 2524-3462

Document Type

Article - Journal

Document Version

Citation

File Type

text

Language(s)

English

Rights

© 2026 Springer, All rights reserved.

Creative Commons Licensing

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Publication Date

01 Jan 2026

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