Nature-Inspired Optimization Across the Mine Value Chain: A Critical Review

Abstract

Nature-inspired optimization offers flexible search mechanisms for mining decisions that combine discrete schedules, nonlinear process responses and competing resource demands. Its practical value, however, depends on the formulation being solved and the evidence supporting the reported improvement. This critical narrative review examines these methods across fragmentation, extraction and blending, transportation, mineral processing, water management, and waste and closure planning. It connects foundational search mechanisms with selected mining studies and distinguishes predictive accuracy, improvement within a mathematical model, and operational validation. The synthesis identifies representation, constraint handling, cross-stage coupling, uncertainty and computational accounting as the principal dimensions of a defensible comparison. A compact mathematical framework makes material balance, recovery, resource limits and residue accumulation explicit. An exactly enumerated, dimensionless example then exposes the consequences of these couplings without claiming empirical algorithm superiority. Of 189 configurations, 14 satisfy all constraints and eight are nondominated in profit, energy and water. A policy that minimizes the fragmentation component at a fixed throughput violates the downstream energy limit, while an alternative fragmentation mode restores feasibility and improves the profit score. Capacity and penalty analyses further show that a higher unconstrained objective can reflect constraint violation and that the penalty weight needed to exclude infeasible optima depends on the instance and normalization. The review concludes with a comparison protocol, elementary arithmetic checks for rank-based results, and a research agenda centered on transparent hybridization, independent process validation and transferable benchmarks. Nature-inspired search is most persuasive when its computational mechanisms are matched to mine-chain structure and its benefits remain traceable to feasible, reproducible decisions.