Over the past several years, there has been substantial progress in developing new stochastic mine planning optimization models and computationally efficient solvers that are capable of managing risk throughout the entire mineral value chain. Recent models have focused on modelling the economic value of the products sold to customers, rather than attempting to evaluate the economic value of the individual mining blocks. This modelling shift permits the integration of many aspects that could not be previously considered, such as the ability to incorporate non-linear geometallurgical interactions in the processing streams. These advanced models have consistently shown the ability to generate a higher net present value than traditional deterministic optimization methods, which is a direct result of risk management. Despite these developments and consistent value-added results, existing commercial mine planning optimization tools have been reluctant to incorporate these new concepts in their platforms.

This paper provides an overview of the ongoing development of COSMO Suite, a platform designed to aid in the dissemination of new stochastic mine planning optimization algorithms, techniques and models to the mining industry. COSMO Suite provides a graphical user interface to create advanced multi-mine and multi-process models for mineral value chains, create tailored optimization models and perform risk analyses on existing mine designs. This software is driven by COSMO Suite Library, a C++ application programming interface that compartmentalizes the process of modelling the mineral value chain, the optimization objectives and constraints, and the solvers, which allows for the rapid development, testing, benchmarking and deployment of new stochastic optimization models and algorithms. As a result, users can benefit from the accelerated knowledge transfer from an academic setting to industrial use.