Geo-environmental impact assessment and management information system for the mining area, Northeast China

The reliability and validity of mining geo-environmental impact assessment strongly depend on the availability of large volumes of high-quality investigation data and an effective evaluation methodology. Combining all the data in a coherent and logical structure supported by a computing environment helps ensure validity and availability. The study’s main objectives were twofold: environmental impact assessment and the development of a managing software tool. The study identifies geo-environmental impacting factors with a relational map, evaluates geo-environmental impact degrees with a comprehensive environmental impact assessment index calculated by the Takagi–Sugeno fuzzy neural network (TSFNN) model, and classifies assessment results into three categories: slight, moderate, and heavy. Furthermore, a routine management system was developed for mining geo-environmental information managers and officials based on a client/server model and component-based Geographic Information System (GIS) secondary development technology. The system has five main capabilities: mine enterprise and geo-environment information management, GIS map display and analysis, data querying and statistical analysis, geo-environmental impact assessment and classification, and document query and management. To verify the software’s performance, Changchun–Jilin–Tumen Economic Area in Jilin Province, Northeast China was selected for application. As validation, 96.23 % of TSFNN model evaluation results are the same as those of the Improved Analytic Hierarchy Process (IAHP) model. The results indicate that 64.15 % of the study area mine sites are moderately damaged and 7.5 % heavily damaged. The software provides an effective tool for geo-environmental information managers and can be applied by local governments for geo-environmental impact assessment and to design sustainable development guidelines for the mining area.