An integrated framework comprising of AHP, expert questionnaire survey and sensitivity analysis for risk assessment in mining projects

Risk analysis is an important exercise in any project management programme. Like any other project, a mining venture is faced with a myriad of risks that need to be identified, quantified and managed. In this paper, a novel framework has been proposed to assess risk in mining projects. The proposed framework integrates the analytic hierarchy process (AHP), expert questionnaire survey and sensitivity analysis. The AHP and expert questionnaire survey determine the impact and probability scores of risks, respectively. The sensitivity analysis on the other hand, determines volatile risk events. It is the identification of these events that makes the proposed framework a novel technique. Identification of volatile risk events is important for generating mitigation plans. The reason for integrating AHP, expert questionnaire survey and sensitivity analysis in the proposed framework is twofold. Firstly, the AHP technique aids the sensitivity analysis by linking risk category weights to risk impact scores. Secondly, the questionnaire survey aids the sensitivity analysis by determining initial probability scores of risk events based on expert knowledge. The developed risk assessment framework was applied to a real mining project to illustrate its practical application in the mining industry.