Classification of underground coal mine basins in Turkey with multicriteria decision making methods

Even though modern production methods have been introduced in some of the underground coal mines in our country, as result of the large-scale accidents occurring in the near-past, undoubtedly the necessary safety precautions and regulations to be taken in the coal mines have re-emerged. Within the purpose of this thesis; major coal mine basins are determined, where enterprises which using underground coal production methods, and where production and occupational accidents are concentrated. Total 39 licensed underground coal mines in 6 different basin which allowed for the application study, has been individually visited one by one and total 191 decision makers (such as senior executives, mining engineers, production engineers, permanent supervisors, and occupational health and safety experts) which working in these coal mines were consulted to their opinions about coal mine through surveys. Hierarchy which consisting of 5 main criteria and 26 sub-criteria is formed using these surveys in the Expert Choice and Microsoft Excel program. In this way, the coal mine basins are classified as according to risk scores. Each main criterion and sub-criterion's importance levels (risk scores) of current risks has been calculated. In this thesis, AHP (Analytic Hierarchy Process) Fuzzy AHP (Fuzzy Analytic Hierarchy Process) and Fuzzy TOPSIS (Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solutions) methods which found only a few applications in our country were preferred. The results that obtained from this thesis is supporting each other and it can be said that these methods can be rather useful methods for risk management process. It should be underlined that, this thesis study is rather than a general approach, has a risk classification based on coal mine basins, evaluation of each coal mine basins as a whole and special conditions taken into account in the risk management process. This study will be a guide for the company managers to achieve decision makers in our country goal of existing the current risks easily, improvements of enterprises conditions about occupational health and safety and what factors should focus on in our country.