83 EVALUATION OF SOCIO-ENVIRONMENTAL CRITERIA USING AHP FOR THE TRANSITION FROM OPEN-PIT TO UNDERGROUND MINING * F. Espínola¹,², E. Castillo¹, L.F. Orellana¹,²* ¹ Department of Mining Engineering, FCFM – University of Chile, Chile ² Advanced Mining Technology Center (AMTC), FCFM – University of Chile, Chile (*Presenting author: fernanda.espinola@uchile.cl) ABSTRACT The transition from open-pit to underground mining represents a key strategic and technical challenge for medium to long-term mine planning. Traditionally, evaluation approaches supporting this type of decision have been dominated by economic, geotechnical, and operational variables, with limited consideration of socio-environmental factors. In this context, this work proposes the use of the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) as a multi-criteria decision-making tool to structure and weight relevant socio-environmental variables, with the aim of designing an integrated socio-environmental risk indicator that can support decisionmaking under transition-related scenarios. The methodology focuses on six key factors: (i) surface disturbance, (ii) extreme climate events, (iii) energy consumption, (iv) mine-to-waterresources distance, (v) mine-to-population-centers distance, and (vi) distance between water resources and population centers. Through pairwise comparisons and criteria prioritization, AHP enables the assignment of relative weights to these factors and defines the structure of the proposed socio-environmental risk indicator as an aggregated measure based on the derived weights. The core contribution of this work is therefore the prioritization and relative quantification of socio-environmental criteria using AHP, providing a transparent and replicable methodological basis for indicator construction. Results indicate that energy consumption and extreme climate events emerge as the most influential criteria, highlighting the importance of explicitly incorporating these dimensions into medium- to long-term strategic assessments. The proposed methodology is applied to a set of large-scale mining operations in north–central Chile, a region that concentrates more than 80% of the country’s copper production and where social and environmental pressures on mining are increasing. This work helps narrow the gap between traditional evaluation frameworks and emerging socio-environmental demands by proposing an approach that anticipates risks, informs subsequent analyses, and supports more robust decision-making aligned with sustainability objectives. KEYWORDS Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP), Multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM), Socioenvironmental risk indicator, Open-pit to underground transition, Chilean copper mining.
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