Development of Multi-Criteria Decision-Making Methods (MCDM) in the Mining Industry

Over the years, mining engineering has been faced with various challenges, including here
the technical - economic - environmental parameters, therefore the need has arisen to apply different
methods on decision-making when based on several criteria, all this with the sole purpose of achieving
the most efficient, reasonable and sustainable solutions.
Multi-criteria decision-making methods (MCDM) have their own importance in the development of
decision-making processes in the field of mining engineering, so this paper aims to present a review of
the history of the development and applicability of some of the most important decision-making
methods. with multiple criteria like AHP which in a hierarchical way provides the structure to
evaluate/rank the available alternatives, TOPSIS offers a clear method for ranking the alternatives
based on their progress in relation to the specified criteria with the aim of the best solution which is
closer to the ideal solution, ELECTRE uses a double process of elimination to arrive at the most suitable
alternative which best fulfills the given decision criteria and the PROMETHEE method integrates a
broad approach and evaluation of the preferences of all alternatives and offers a structured solution for
the best alternative according to preferences.
The study provides an understanding of the applicability of these methods in the field of mining
engineering, how multi-criteria decision-making methods can be used to improve processes to achieve
goals depending on different technical-economic-environmental parameters.
Key words: Decision-making methods, multi-criteria, AHP, TOPSIS, ELECTRE, PROMETHEE.