Comparative Advantages of the Mineral Excavation in Azerbaijan-e-Gharbi Province of Iran

Mines and mining industries are an important way to reach the sustainable development and investing in these sectors creates the suitable economics value added. Therefore, prioritization of the mineral activities are helpful for persuasion of future investments. The main aim of this research is to rank the mining activities of the Azerbaijan-e-Gharbi Province in Iran with considering five main criteria including economic, cultural and social, environmental, technical and also political criteria.

In this study, the main in-operation mines are considered. The technique for order of preference by similarity to ideal solution and also the analytical hierarchy process are used to prioritize the mining activities. To reduce the uncertainties, all calculations are done under the fuzzy environment. Results and

Results of this study show that, the cultural, social and environmental criteria have the highest importance degree in comparison to the other criteria. The iron and gold mines are in the first priority, while the chromic and manganese mines and lead and zinc mines are respectively in the second and third priority. The quarry and gypsum mineral types, the barite, red and yellow soil, kaolin, fireclay and dolomite, salt and silica, sand, rubble, mica, limestone and ballast mines are respectively ranked.