Mine Planning DELPHOS Laboratory started as a joint venture between BHP Billiton and Universidad de Chile, with the main goal of facilitating the implementation and research in the mine planning areas in this and other world class research centers. For this purpose, DELPHOS counts with last generation hardware and software, which are adequate to develop and adapt the solutions provided in the laboratory and integrate them into the mine planning processes of the mining companies. DELPHOS also provides the training in these tools.

DELPHOS provides the infrastructure to solve complex problems of mine planning, which are difficult to tackle by the mine operations. With this, DELPHOS aims to aid some activities of mine planning by means of High Performance Computing. For this, the laboratory counts with specialized software and computational capabilities that permit to manage the data for any time-horizon planning.

The research areas include:

• Short-term and long-term mine planning under uncertainty,
• Production plan optimization,
• Simulations
• Optimization algorithms (Linear Programming, Genetic Algorithms, Heuristics)
• Reliability models
• Strategic valuation of projects through financial instruments

Delphos belongs to the Mining Engineering Department at the Universidad de Chile and it is part of the Advanced Mining Technology Center.