Application of Fuzzy Expert System to Determine the Degree of Sustainable Development of Mineral Resources

Sustainable development of mineral resources is the result of carefully integrating environmental, economical, and social needs to achieve both an increased living standard in the short term, and maintain the equilibrium of the natural resources to support future generations. The increasing demand of the mineral resources needs sustainable exploitation of these resources. But the worldwide accepted scale to measure the sustainability is not available with us. The objective of this paper is to develop a methodology to determine the degree of sustainable development of the mineral resources. The methodology is based on the fuzzy logic to make the quantification of the sustainable development. Though, there are number of parameters, on which sustainable development depends, we have considered only four major parameters like availability of mineral resources, economical development, societal development, and environmental protection, to evaluate the degree of sustainable development.