Designing of an environmental assessment algorithm for surface mining projects

This paper depicts the method used to quantify the environmental impact of mining activities in surface mine projects. The affected environment was broken down into thirteen components, such as Human health and immunity, Surface water, Air quality, etc. The effect of twenty impacting factors from the mining and milling activities was then calculated for each Environmental Component. Environmental assessments are often performed by using matrix methods in which one dimension of the matrix is the "Impacting Factor" and the other one is the "Environmental Components". For the presented matrix method, each Impacting Factor was first given a magnitude between -10 and 10. These factors are used to set up a matrix named Impacting Factor Matrix, whose elements represent the Impacting Factor values. The effects of each Impacting Factor on each Environmental Component were then quantified by multiplying the Impacting Factor Matrix by Weighting Factor Matrix. The elements of the weighting factors matrix reflect the effects of each Impacting Factor on each Environmental Component. The outlined method was originally developed for a mining and milling operation in Iran, but it can successfully be used for mining ventures and more general industrial activities in other countries in accordance to their environmental regulations and laws. © 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved

Designing of an environmental assessment algorithm for underground mining projects

In current paper the purposes of an environmental assessment are described and the method, through which the "Impacting Factors" and "Environmental Components" are determined, is also outlined. Then, according to the definition, possible scenarios, and matrixes of weighting factors, the algorithm which shows the relation between Impacting Factors and Environmental Components is determined. Furthermore, the derivation of matrixes and the method of environmental assessment are described. In order to compare the existing situation of Environmental Components with standards, the standard diagrams of Environmental Components are derived and introduced. As the main advantage, this new algorithm takes several environmental issues and their interaction into consideration