Title: Sustainable development and planning of coal industry under uncertainty using system dynamic and stochastic programming

Authors: Jiuping Xu, Desheng Dash Wu, Rentao Dong

Addresses: State Keylaboratory of Hydraulics and Mountain River Engineering, Sichuan University, Chengdu 610064, China. ' School of Science and Engineering, Reykjavik University, Ofanleiti 2, 103 Reykjavik, Iceland; RiskLab, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON M5S 3G3, Canada. ' Uncertainty Decision-Making Laboratory, Sichuan University, Chengdu 610064, China

Abstract: We select a city that is one of the ten major coal bases in China and analyse the prospective development of the coal industry in this region. We introduce Stochastic Programming (SP) to the coal industry to manage uncertainties complicating the accurate prediction of the industry|s development. First, we establish a coal industry system in the region and analyse this system. Second, we set up a System Dynamic-Stochastic Programming (SD-SP) model based on the coal industry in the region. Third, we set up the SD-SP model with sensitivity analysis to the coal industry. Finally, we complete the simulation by importing optimum parameters and contrasting the optimisation scheme with the current programming scheme.

Keywords: coal industry; stochastic programming; system dynamics; simulation; forecasting; sensitivity analysis; China; sustainable development; sustainability; uncertainty; industry development.

DOI: 10.1504/IJEP.2010.035351

International Journal of Environment and Pollution, 2010 Vol.42 No.4, pp.371 - 387

Published online: 26 Sep 2010 *

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