An approach to differentiation and evaluation of mineral resource potential in coal mining

Abstract

A mining company is a complex probabilistic system which functions in-between the geological and market environments. These environments are the carriers of various uncertainties which have influence on the business success. The authors discuss the background of differentiation of the mineral resource potential in terms of a coal field as transformation of a natural possibility to the manmade reality. It is distinguished between the limit, achievable and investment potentials. This type design takes into account the stages of geological exploration, study of coal properties and actual mining of the subsoil use object. The static, ergodic and non-ergodic categories of uncertainty are discussed.