An evaluating system for scientific mining of China's coal resources

Coal as the basic energy in China plays a pivotal role in supporting national economic development and protecting national energy safety. The sustainable development of China's coal industry is still a hot topic both in practice and research. In terms of the lack of theoretical researches and practical applications of scientific coal mining evaluation, we built an evaluating system to assess the current development activities of coal enterprises. In the present work, to evaluate the scientific basis for coal mining systematically, effectively and objectively, the key indexes for assessing the level of scientific mining of coal resources were established using the document analysis method and the expert consultation method. The evaluating system consisting of 5 dimensions (informatization, productivity, safe mining, full cost and green mining), 18 criteria, and 56 assessment factors was constructed. Then, the weight values at all levels in the evaluating system were calculated using the analytical hierarchy process (AHP). Finally, an evaluating model for scientific mining could be constructed based on the comprehensive index assessment method. The application of this evaluating system of scientific mining could be used for finding the existing problems in the coal production process. Therefore, the coal enterprise managers and the government regulators could make the appropriate policies to enhance the scientific exploitation level of coal mines. •We analyze the literature on scientific coal mining.•Small number of papers concerns scientific coal mining evaluating system.•We construct an evaluating system for scientific coal mining.•Literature analysis, expert consultation method and analytic hierarchy process (AHP) were used.