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.