Describing local community acceptance with discrete choice theory for enhanced community engagement

This research sought to facilitate improved community (stakeholder) analysis by providing further insight on the determinants of local community acceptance using discrete choice theory. Specifically, the goals were to: (1) Identify, classify, and verify the important project characteristics and key demographic factors which affect local community acceptance of a mining project; (2) Account for the large number of relevant factors inherent in discrete choice experiments for mining community acceptance evaluation; and (3) Examine discrete choice models to select the most appropriate model for mining community consultation. The research will test the hypotheses that various discrete choice models can describe the local community’s acceptance of mining projects. Surveys were used to validate a classification of important mining project characteristics and demographic factors. Sixteen project characteristics and four demographic factors were identified as important for individual preferences for mining projects. A mixed style, blocking scheme, fractional factorial without interaction discrete choice experiment was proposed to overcome the challenge posed by the large number of relevant factors. The design was validated, revised, and implemented in Salt Lake City, UT to illustrate the usefulness of discrete choice theory in mining stakeholder analysis. Three candidate discrete choice models were evaluated to select the best model for mining stakeholder analysis. The results show that the conditional logit model, stratified by question, is the most suitable. The proposed approach has been demonstrated to answer three important questions for enhanced stakeholder analysis: (1) what are the factors that affect stakeholders’ decision and how do these affect their preferences? (2) what is the effect of demographics on individual preferences? (3) what is the value of environmental and social impacts to individuals in the community? --Abstract, page iii

Eliciting Drivers of Community Perceptions of Mining Projects through Effective Community Engagement

Sustainable mining has received much attention in recent years as a consequence of the negative impacts of mining and public awareness. The aim of this paper is to provide mining companies guidance on improving the sustainability of their sites through effective community engagement based on recent advances in the literature. It begins with a review of the literature on sustainable development and its relationship to stakeholder engagement. It then uses the literature to determine the dominant factors that affect community perceptions of mining projects. These factors are classified into five categories: environmental, economic, social, governance and demographic factors. Then, we propose a new two-stage method based on discrete choice theory and the classification that can improve stakeholder engagement and be cost-effective. Further work is required to validate the proposed method, although it shows potential to overcome some of the challenges plaguing current approaches

Modeling of Geometric Change Influence on Blast-Wave Propagation in Underground Airways Using a 2D-Transient Euler Scheme

The impact of methane explosions on mining operations can never be over-emphasized. The safety of miners could be threatened and local ventilation facilities are likely to be damaged by the flame and overpressure induced by a methane explosion event, making it essential to understand the destructiveness and influence range of a specific explosion. In this paper, the attenuation effect of geometric changes, most commonly bends, obstacles, and branches, present in the way of blast-wave propagation and the capability of the selected numerical model were studied. Although some relevant experimental research has been provided, quantitative analysis is insufficient. This paper investigates the attenuation factors of seven bends, three obstacles, and two T-branch scenarios to ascertain a better insight of this potentially devastating event quantitatively. The results suggest that (1) the numerical model used is capable of predicting four of the seven validated scenarios with a relative error less than 12%; (2) the maximum peak overpressure is obtained when the angle equals 50° for bend cases; and (3) the selected numerical scheme would overestimate the obstacle cases by around 15%

Scale Effect of Premixed Methane-Air Combustion in Confined Space Using LES Model

Gas explosion is the most hazardous incident occurring in underground airways. Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) techniques are sophisticated in simulating explosions in confined spaces; specifically, when testing large-scale gaseous explosions, such as methane explosions in underground mines. The dimensions of a confined space where explosions could occur vary significantly. Thus, the scale effect on explosion parameters is worth investigating. In this paper, the impact of scaling on explosion overpressures is investigated by employing two scaling factors: The Gas-fill Length Scaling Factor (FLSF) and the Hydraulic Diameter Scaling Factor (HDSF). The combinations of eight FLSFs and five HDSFs will cover a wide range of space dimensions where flammable gas could accumulate. Experiments were also conducted to evaluate the selected numerical models. The Large Eddy Simulation turbulence model was selected because it shows accuracy compared to the widely used Reynolds\u27 averaged models for the scenarios investigated in the experiments. Three major conclusions can be drawn: (1) The overpressure increases with both FLSF and HDSF within the deflagration regime; (2) In an explosion duct with a length to diameter ratio greater than 54, detonation is more likely to be triggered for a stoichiometric methane/air mixture; (3) Overpressure increases as an increment hydraulic diameter of a geometry within deflagration regime. A relative error of 7% is found when predicting blast peak overpressure for the base case compared to the experiment; a good agreement for the wave arrival time is also achieved

Corporate Social Responsibility: Understanding the Mining Stakeholder with a Case Study

The social responsibility of corporate mining has been challenged by a significant socio-political risk from local communities. These issues reduce shareholder value by increasing costs and decreasing the market perception of corporate social responsibility. Community engagement is the process of understanding the behavior and interests of a group of targeted mining communities through surveys and data analysis, with the purpose of incorporating mining community acceptance into the mining sustainability. While mining organizations have discussed community engagement to varying degrees, there are three main shortcomings in current studies, as concluded in the authors\u27 previous research. This paper presents a framework to apply discrete choice theory to improve mining community engagement and corporate mining social responsibility. In addition, this paper establishes the main technical challenges to implement the developed framework, and presents methods to overcome the challenges for future research with a case study. The contribution of this research will transform mine sustainability in a fundamental way by facilitating the incorporation of effective community engagement. This will lead to more sustainable mines that local communities support

The Status of the Local Community in Mining Sustainable Development beyond the Triple Bottom Line

Mineral products provide essential fuels and raw materials for industrialization and our daily life, but their influences on other aspects of life need to be taken into consideration. While the whole world benefits from mining\u27s contributions, most of the resulting detrimental impacts on the environment and society fall on the local communities. The participation of the local community is one solution to decrease the risks from community-related problems. Subsequently, the requirements of mining sustainable development can be met. A literature review was conducted on mining sustainability and stakeholder participation, and the shortcomings of existing research and difficulties of further study were discussed in detail. This study covers a broad understanding of mining sustainability from a mining community\u27s perspective. In addition, it offers a new mining sustainability scope based on the literature review. Besides the balance of economic, environmental, and social aspects, the mine owner and local community have to be engaged in the new mining sustainability scope. This literature review could improve community engagement and help mining companies to better understand local mining communities

The Status of the Local Community in Mining Sustainable Development beyond the Triple Bottom Line

Mineral products provide essential fuels and raw materials for industrialization and our daily life, but their influences on other aspects of life need to be taken into consideration. While the whole world benefits from mining’s contributions, most of the resulting detrimental impacts on the environment and society fall on the local communities. The participation of the local community is one solution to decrease the risks from community-related problems. Subsequently, the requirements of mining sustainable development can be met. A literature review was conducted on mining sustainability and stakeholder participation, and the shortcomings of existing research and difficulties of further study were discussed in detail. This study covers a broad understanding of mining sustainability from a mining community’s perspective. In addition, it offers a new mining sustainability scope based on the literature review. Besides the balance of economic, environmental, and social aspects, the mine owner and local community have to be engaged in the new mining sustainability scope. This literature review could improve community engagement and help mining companies to better understand local mining communities

Optimising Design Parameters of Continuous Mining Transport Systems Using Discrete Event Simulation

The ground articulating pipeline (GAP) system was developed to transport oil sand using a continuous transport system. This paper proposes a simulation-based optimisation approach to improve the efficiency of oil sand continuous transport systems at the operational level. Based on the analysis of shovel capacity, the authors recommend that this GAP transfer system should operate with a 70-ton capacity shovel. They also recommend that a surge hopper should be introduced on the mobile slurry system to maximise productivity of the GAP system. This simulation approach can be applied to crushers and conveyor belt systems

Delineating Hazardous CO₂ Fluxes from Acid Mine Drainage

Incidents of hazardous accumulations of CO2 in homes built on or near reclaimed mine land, in the last decade, have been shown to be linked to neutralization reactions between acidic mine drainage and carbonate material. Recent research has shown that CO2 fluxes on reclaimed mine land with this hazard are, sometimes, spatially autocorrelated (i.e., the spatial variability is not random). This result implies geostatistics can be used to delineate hazardous areas where fluxes are likely to exceed established thresholds. This study applies sequential Gaussian simulation to delineate this emerging hazard on a site in southwestern Indiana, USA. Due to lack of regulatory threshold limits for CO2 flux at the current time, the authors conduct a sensitivity analysis of the threshold limit using the 75th, 90th and 95th percentiles of the measured fluxes for the first day of monitoring. These limits are used to produce hazard maps, which are validated with the known hazard at the site. This work further shows the potential of surface CO2 flux monitoring as a cheap and effective strategy to monitor and delineate such hazards to avoid residential and commercial real estate development in high risk zones

Optimizing Design Parameters for Ground Articulating Pipeline System Using Discrete Event Simulation

The ground articulating pipeline (GAP) system was designed to transport oil sands slurry from the face to a fixed pipeline system (Frimpong et al., 2002). The GAP system can reduce the dependence on haulage trucks for long haulage distances and to achieve efficient management of the excavation-haulage operations. However, further research is required to investigate how to optimize the interaction between the shovel and GAP system and the impact of the new pipe arm adding process on production. In this research, discrete event simulation using Arena® was used to analyze the interaction between the shovel and GAP system. The objectives of this simulation are to: (1) Investigate the GAP system performance, as a function of shovel cycle time, shovel capacity and GAP system throughput, when working with a shovel; and (2) Recommend optimal GAP design parameters, based on the simulation results. The results show that the degree of importance of the three factors investigated are shovel capacity \u3e shovel cycle time \u3e GAP system throughput rate. Based on this evaluation, the most important factor (out of the three) is identified and its optimal value found from further experiments. It is also recommended that a larger hopper on the mobile slurry system is considered to improve system performance. This work further refines the design of the GAP system and moves it closer to application in the mining industry