Advanced analytics for surface extraction

Nowadays, approximately 90% of the minerals are extracted using surface mining methods. Surface mining is the process of extracting minerals located at the surface or near the surface. Although at least nine different surface mining methods have been introduced thus far, open pit and strip mining have the highest contribution in raw material extraction from Earth. Deposits that are being mined using these two methods are substantially expensive, both in the capital and operational costs requiring several managerial decisions to be made for the sake of lowering proportions of the total costs. Analytics has had an inevitable role in this matter. It has been involved in the decision-making procedures from method selection to finding the best location for in-pit crushers in surface mines. This chapter elaborates on how analytics contribute to different steps of extracting material using surface mining methods.