METHOD, APPARATUS AND COMPUTER PROGRAM FOR SCHEDULING THE EXTRACTION OF A RESOURCE AND FOR DETERMINING THE NET PRESENT VALUE OF AN EXTRACTION SCHEDULE

摘要

The scheduling of extraction of a resource within a mine is disclosed which comprises obtaining drill hole grade data relating to the resource and creating a plurality of different block models, with each block in each model having a resource grade and each of the block models honoring the drill hole grade data. An extraction schedule is determined based on a cut-off grade policy to increase expected net present value of the mine. The cut-off grade policy can be a variable cut-off grade and the scheduling using the variable cut-off grade is converted from a non-linear representation to a linear representation and a mixed integer programming formulation is used for simultaneous optimization of the extraction schedule and the cut-off grade.