The use of Decision Analysis is becoming more widespread in industry as
a whole, and there is considerable scope for its application in the mining
industry. Wherever decisions have to be made, whenever risks have to be
taken, whenever uncertainty exists or whenever judgements have to be
made, then Decision Analysis can be used. In the mining industry we
daily make many decisions involving risk, uncertainty and judgement.
Expansion and diversity will only increase the need for balanced decision
making techniques. This paper seeks to describe the history and principles of Decision
Theory, and to illustrate the various modelling approaches using three
fictitious yet realistic case studies. Decision Analysis logically integrates the quantifiable and seemingly
non-quantifiable aspects of a decision problem into a coherent, explicit
and rational solution. It also allows the decision-makers to see the full
impact of each variable or uncertainty, and hence focus on the key aspects
that influence the solution.