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A research report submitted to the Faculty of Engineering and the Built Environment, University of the Witwatersrand, in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science in Engineering Johannesburg 2015 / Regardless of the strategic role that mining plays in South Africa‟s economic growth and development, there are perceptions that mining benefits are still enjoyed by a few elite individuals. This is partly due to high expectations from lower level workers in the sector and communities where mining takes place. Failures in the implementation of some of the policies that are social in nature are making people question the wisdom of the current mining legislation, the Mineral and Petroleum Resources Development Act (MPRDA). The main question of this research paper is whether the MPRDA, in its current form, is a suitable mining legislative framework that can usher a better dispensation for all or whether there is a need to overhaul it in order to deliver the desired end results that are expected by the majority of South Africans. It is against this background that this research was undertaken, by studying best practice in other mining jurisdictions and conducting a survey of those involved in the South African mining sector. From the research and surveys, recommendations are proposed on what amendments could be effected on the MPRDA to make the South African mining sector more attractive and simultaneously, meet the citizens‟ expectations.

This dissertation discusses three questions of development and environmental economics. First, it assesses the impact of mineral mining on the health and wealth of households in local communities across 44 developing countries, using micro data. Secondly, it presents evidence from a randomized controlled trial on the cost-shared provision of well-water tests for arsenic. Finally, it analyzes measurement error in a satellite night light data product widely used in development research, and investigates the scope for using the data in very high spatial resolution.

This thesis describes preliminary research on the application of Markov Decision Processes (MDPs) to the optimisation of mine scheduling in an uncertain environment. The MDP framework is a novel approach to scheduling in a mining operation and option valuation. The task of scheduling in mining operations is dependent on the availability of models that permit the representation of some of the key stochastic properties of the environment, such as grade and price uncertainty. The tools used to model these processes are respectively sequential Gaussian simulation and Geometric Brownian motion. Three cases of increasing size are used to illustrate the results of the model and demonstrate its suitability to mine scheduling and option valuation. The computational efficiencies of solving an MDP formulation by Policy Iteration and Value Iteration are compared. The impact of the discount rate on the optimal policy is assessed. To determine the value of one or several options, an optimal policy without options is generated and valued. Then, the exercise is repeated with the relevant options to value (e.g., production rate, cut-off grade and time of mine closure). By comparing the values obtained in both cases, the financial benefit of having operational flexibility is determined, thus yielding the option value. A full size case study is conducted to validate the applicability of MDPs to real mining projects.

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Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Melbourne, School of Anthropology, Geography and Environmental Studies, 2007. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 357-389).

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Typescript (photocopy). / Digitized by Kansas Correctional Industries