Environmental impact assessment based on group decision-making methods in mining projects

Mining operations usually comprise a spread spectrum of environmental challenges, which are often unique to each mine site. This is due to the fact that mining activities, directly or indirectly, have an adverse impact on environment and ecology. For this reason, the environmental impact assessment (EIA) process has been developed for evaluation of the possible impact of mine development and operations on the environment, including the natural, social and economic aspects. In this article, an EIA methodology based on analytic network process and fuzzy simple additive weight (SAW) is proposed to formulate the environmental risks pertaining to mining projects. In the system of the proposed model, the importance weights are calculated by an ANP process. Then, fuzzy SAW is employed to evaluate the preference ratings of the alternatives. The merit of using fuzzy logic is to handle the inherent uncertainty in modelling an EIA problem by simplifying the sophisticated structure of the problem under consideration. The proposed model is utilised to assess the environmental impact generated by zinc and lead mining projects located in Zanjan, Iran to shape the future industrial and mining structure of the region. Finally, the environmental impacts are ranked from the most to the least risky.