No abstract

Sustainability of the open pit mining and technical system (MTS) is one of its key goals in the changing conditions of the external and internal environment. All MTS’s subsystems must function in concert to achieve this goal. The structure of the MTS is formed by many subsystems and elements, which are evaluated by a significant number of indicators. A comprehensive assessment of the MTS for all possible indicators is a complex and time-consuming task. However, each subsystem and element of the MTS has a different effect on the sustainability of this system. The MTS’s parameters change significantly during transition periods, for example, at a new stage of open-pit mining or when switching to an open-underground method of developing mineral deposits. The MTS’s sustainability declines during the transition periods. Changes in the parameters of technological processes during these periods can have a negative impact on the state of the economic and social subsystems of mining enterprises, as well as on the environment. Ensuring the sustainability of an MTS during transition periods requires the development of new approaches and principles for managing the work of mining enterprises, based on the alignment of economic goals, with goals in the field of ecology and social development. The study substantiates the key role of one of the MTS subsystems—the opening-up of an opencast system (OOS). It is shown that this system has a decisive influence on sustainable functioning and development. The systematization of the principles of sustainable functioning and development of mining enterprises and its systems has been carried out. Four groups of principles are distinguished: system-wide principles of management, principles of development of mining enterprises, principles of MTS development, and principles of the MTS’s subsystem development. The proposed system of principles is based on the idea of a sequential transformation of the subsystems at all stages of design and operation. A feature of the proposal system of principles is the consideration of economic, social, and environmental aspects to ensure the specified parameters for the sustainable functioning and development of mining enterprises. The results of the analysis of the factors of the external and internal environment of the MTS are presented. The parameters and indicators for assessing the sustainability of OOS and MTSs were selected and substantiated. The justified parameters and indicators were ranked using the fuzzy Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP). The results of the assessment showed a high convergence of expert opinions on a group of economic parameters, which were rather high in technical and technological parameters. However, there is a divergence of expert opinions on social and environmental parameters. As a result of the study, it was concluded that the current management decisions are aimed at ensuring the economic and technological sustainability of MTS functioning, while achieving the goals of sustainable development of this system is not ensured. The methodology developed and presented in the study can be used to assess the sustainability of the functioning and development of MTSs.

Nowadays, the reduction of the harmful effect on the environment is one of the essential state-level and international challenges. The solution of this problem lies in a worldwide use of concepts and principles of sustainable development, but also in transport and logistics performance by principles and methods of green logistics. The first part of the paper presents the review of the most authoritative studies in the field of sustainable development and green logistics. The second part of the article reflects the original approach to achieving the goals of sustainable development in the operation of logistics and transport systems based on the harmonisation of economic purposes and principles of logistics with principles of sustainable development that are reached through the systematisation of reviewed methods and instruments of logistics.

The continuous increase of trade between China and Europe brought congestion problems at major Chinese seaports. An effective way to solve this issue is to set up intermodal terminals often called dry ports. However, the dynamics of various influenced factors on dry port’s implementation calls for the adaptive and flexible planning of the terminal. This paper analyzes the shortcomings of previous research related to the dry port’s implementation from the perspective of the applied numerous parameters concerning evaluating its operational efficiency and sustainability. The operational efficiency and sustainability of a dry port are evaluated by the developed system of the main parameters. This system gives the understanding of how these parameters are interrelated between each other and fills the gap in studies of inverse interrelations between main parameters of a dry port. To fully understand the sustainability of the main parameters of a dry port, this paper puts forward the simulation models description of the developed system. The developed model is a practical tool to evaluate the reliability of hypotheses about the functional interrelations between the main parameters of the dry port, as well as to evaluate the sustainability of the system. Finally, in order to develop functional interrelations between main parameters, the data from several Chinese dry ports has been collected. Finally, the developed multi-agent system dynamics model has been validated in the case study of Yiwu dry port located in Zhejiang, China.

Supply chains and transport corridors have a significant impact on the socio-economic and environmental situation in the regions where the elements of the logistics infrastructure are located. The achievement of the goals of the concept of sustainable development in these regions is ensured, among other things, as a result of the formation of green supply chain management (GSCM), that is, as a result of changes in existing approaches to supply chain management. Analysis of the practice of supply chain management showed a wide variety of parameters and indicators of logistics flows used in decision-making at different stages of managing these flows. The authors propose a universal system of the logistic flows parameters and indicators for the GSCM, corresponding to the principles of the concept of sustainable development. A methodology for ranking indicators of logistics flows based on a combined DEMATEL-ANP method has been developed. The results of a case study on the evaluation of logistics flows for the GSCM are presented. The ranks of logistics flow indicators obtained in the study are proposed to be used in GSCM to adjust of the logistics flows actual parameters to achieve the goals of the concept of sustainable development.