Status of Sustainability Development of Deep-Sea Mining Activities

Abstract

With technological improvement such as ore exploration, robotics, and hydrodynamic lifting, deep-sea mining has attracted more attention from governments, companies, and scientific research institutions. Although its research and development has made great progress, there are still many obstacles in its industrial development, such as environmental pollution and sustainability development issues. This article analyses the research status of the sustainable development of deep-sea mining from an overall perspective. Through a literature review, this paper also discusses the application of the full life cycle assessment method to analyze environmental impact during the entire process of deep-sea mining ore application. Overall, this paper summarizes the research gaps that exist in the sustainable development of deep-sea mining, including the lack of sufficient quantitative research, environmental baseline data research, cumulative environmental impact assessment, resource recycling technology, and acceptable environmental impact range analysis. The significance of this article is to point out the most urgent problems to be solved in the research direction of the sustainable development of deep-sea mining in current academic circles. It has far-reaching potential to promote the industrialization process of the entire deep-sea mining industry.

An Algorithm of Complete Coverage Path Planning for Deep‐Sea Mining Vehicle Clusters Based on Reinforcement Learning

“…To allow grids with the same state to be represented by uniform element values, the fused state matrix element values need to be harmonized using formulas. The harmonized method is shown in Equation (1).…”

“…If deep‐sea mineral resources can be extracted using efficient and low‐cost methods, the current shortage of mineral resources will be greatly alleviated. [ 1 ] Therefore, many countries and researchers are actively researching deep‐sea mining systems and related technologies.…”

Logistical Assessment of Deep-Sea Polymetallic Nodules Transport from an Offshore to an Onshore Location Using a Multiobjective Optimization Approach

“…Similarly, the environmental aspect focuses on the impact of the exploration and recovery process on the marine environment, which has also been extensively researched in the literature [2,[5][6][7][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23] to address some of the challenges in this area. Meanwhile, the economic aspect focuses on the business models and the viability of the nodules for commercial purposes.…”

Smarthub for supervising system for resource exploration and pollution control in deep-water and coastal areas based on ICT technologies

“…Moreover, the scarcity of biological and geological baseline data on the deep and shallow seabed is another major issue in evaluating the impacts of physical disturbances, and the justification of statements on the severity of the impacts is not always detailed. The research status of the sustainable development of deep-sea mining from an overall scope of view is not defined, Ma et al. (2022).…”