Loss calc
Simulations create an ensemble with multiple values for every grid block, comprising a probabilistic estimate of what's underground. The ensemble accounts for grade uncertainty. The loss calc task takes that ensemble and uses a loss function to put blocks into categories, such as ore or waste. The loss function uses economic criteria, like cutoff grade, metal recovery fraction, and metal price.
The task looks at the simulated values for each block and calculates the expected loss of including or excluding that block from each category. Then, it assigns the block to the category where the expected loss of including the block is lower than the expected loss of excluding it. If that's true for more than one category, the block will go into whichever of those is last in your list of categories.
Let be the simulation results, where is the simulated value of block in realization .
For each category, let:
- be the cutoff grade,
- be the metal recovery fraction,
- be the metal price,
- be the processing cost,
- be the mining waste cost,
- be the mining ore cost,
- be the empirical probability that block is above the cutoff grade 1,
- be the conditional mean of simulated values at block that are above the cutoff grade 2,
- be the conditional mean of simulated values at block that are below the cutoff grade 3.,
Then, the expected loss from excluding block from the category is
And the expected loss from including block in the category is