An Approach to Risk Assessment of an Investment Project for the Development of a Coal Deposit

To assess the risk of an investment project for the development of coal deposits in conditions of the initial data uncertainty, methods of fuzzy logic are used, which allow operating quantitative and qualitative information, including the one difficult to formalize. To take into account the uncertainty of the initial geological information, on the basis of which all decisions on the development of a coal deposit are made, it is suggested to use an objective multi-variance of ideas (uncertainty of knowledge) about the geology of the deposit, based on the results of geological exploration. Such multi-variant mining and geometrical models of field indicators as pessimistic, design (traditional) and optimistic models taking into account the uncertainty of geological information are built. The values of the control parameters (minimum, design and maximum) are determined according to multi-variant models of the main indicators of the deposit (seam thickness, seam ash content, etc.). The price of marketable products, production volume, capital and operating costs are taken as regulating parameters. The degree of the current criterion value belonging – net discounted income – to a fuzzy set is established by a triangular function, which is determined by the minimum, design and maximum value of the criterion. The average value of the degree of belonging of the current criterion value to a fuzzy set for all regulatory parameters is taken as a quantitative assessment of the project efficiency (sustainability); the closer this value is to 1, the more sustainable is the project. Assessment of the project’s efficiency by a set of economic criteria involves the formation of a linguistic term-set of project’s states: “inefficient project”, “project of average efficiency”, “efficient project”, “highly efficient project”, etc., with expert assignment of values from 0 to 1 to terms. The degree of a fuzzy set membership of the current value for each of the accepted criteria is also determined by a triangular function. The average value of the membership degree according to the set of accepted criteria (for example, net present value and internal rate of return) is correlated with the linguistic set, thereby establishing the project sustainability according to the set of criteria. The proposed approach makes possible the quantitative assessment of the risks of investment projects for the coal deposits development caused by the uncertainty (fuzziness) of knowledge about the geology of deposit at the pre-design stage.