主权项 |
1. A method implemented by a pit design system to maximize a value of a pit excavated in a mining operation, said method comprising:
(a) receiving into the processing system a geological model representing resources to be mined; (b) dividing, by the pit design system, resources in the geological model into base resource units; (c) generating, by the pit design system based on the defined base resource units and the geological model, a set of resource increments to excavate the base resource units, each resource increment comprising of a base resource unit and of overlaying material approximating an inverted truncated cone extending upward from the base resource unit to a surface of the pit or the surface reflecting the excavation of all previously processed resource increments; (d) grouping, by pit design system, the resource increments into RI groups comprised of one or more resource increments requires:
(i) identifying two or more interdependent resource increments; and(ii) combining the interdependent resource increments into resource increment groups. (e) determining, by said pit design system, a resource group value for each resource group; (f) sorting, by said pit design system based on the resource increment group values, the resource groups into a first set of resource groups and a second set of resource groups such that:
(i) no resource group in the first set can, if removed from the set, increase the value of the first set of resource groups; and(ii) no resource group in the second set can, if added to the first set, increase value of the first set of resource groups; (g) generating, by the pit design system based on the set of equal to or greater than 0 value resource groups, a list of resource increments to be excavated from the pit. |