Structural analysis of impacting factors of sustainable development in underground coal mining using DEMATEL method

Mining can become more sustainable by developing and integrating economic, environmental, and social components. Among the mining industries, coal mining requires paying a serious attention to the aspects of sustainable development. Therefore, in this work, we investigate the impacting factors involved in the sustainable development of underground coal mining from the structural viewpoint. For this purpose, the decision-making trial and evaluation laboratory (DEMATEL) technique, which is a graph-based method, is utilized. To do so, at first, twenty effective factors are determined for three components. Then the hierarchical structure and the systematic approach are used to determine the total exerted influence or total received influence of the components. The results obtained show that the environmental and social components are the most important, and the economic components are the least important among them.