Decision Making for Sustainability: The Case of Minerals Development in Australia

摘要: The mining and minerals processing industry requires assistance in decision making to support its drive to sustainable development. To this end, a decision support framework (DSF) has been developed, guided by the tenets of Sustainability. This paper describes this DSF and its various components, which include tools for the formulation of techno-economic, environmental and socio-political objectives, and other tools of Decision Analysis which assist in exploring requisite trade-offs between various objectives. The DSF is based on detailed mass balance models of the Australian mining and minerals processing industry, reflecting the “status quo”. The methodology for developing these models, as superstructures, is described briefly. Though mass balance models have been developed for the entire industry, only the mass balance results obtained from the Australian copper industry are included here. These models have value in the context of the DSF as they provide a basis from which to explore various types of decision–from investment in new technologies, to improvements in existing process trains. The structure of the DSF facilitates comparison of options for continuous improvement. The techno-economic and environmental performance of the industry as a whole, as well as any particular sector of the industry, can be evaluated in this way. In this paper we offer some discussion on the methodology by which performance is assessed, considering all decision objectives, but, here, with a specific focus on environmental performance. A case study exploring the potential of the DSF to guide decision making around technology selection in the …