Fecha de publicación: 11/06/2010 Fuente: WIPO "sustainability" Mineral resource utilization is indispensable for the economic development of any country and at the same time it has adverse impact on its surrounding environment. The sustainable assessment of mineral resources requires the measure of environmental value in order to facilitate the decision makers for its responsible exploitation. Hence an attempt has been made to design a spatial decision support system utilizing different multi criteria techniques and with development of environment sustainability framework. Analytical hierarchy process has been customized in order to rank different alternative for the environmental assessment of mining areas. In all twenty six indicators within six components viz. air, water, land (vegetation cover, forest), landscape, socioeconomic and site-specific are considered for designing the spatial decision support system framework in view of assessing environmental sustainability in mining areas. Criteria are also considered based upon the above indicators selected for designing the SDSS keeping in view of the environmental critical problems associated with mining activities.Following invention is described in detail with the help of Figure 1 which denotes Generic Structure of MESA SDSSFigure 2 which denotes Processes in MESA SDSS for assessing environmental sustainability in mining areasFigure 3 which denote Composite Environmental Sustainability map obtained for a mining area through designed SDSS where legend environmental sustainability AHP_scenario2:Figure 4 shows legend environmental sustainability normalized with population density.