Sustainable development oriented bi-level dynamic programming method toward the coal–water conflict in China

As coal and water resources are important foundations of sustainable national economic and social development, the coal–water conflict has been drawing increasing attention. In particular, pollution and reductions in groundwater resources are major problems. To analyze the coal–water conflict, this study presents a bi-level dynamic program in an uncertain environment that comprehensively considers the relationship between the government and colliery enterprises. The goal is to create a fair and reasonable mining quota allocation scheme based on environmental protection and economic development. Moreover, the model considers mining activities in different coal seams for each colliery as well as the effect of seasons. A probability measure is used to solve the problem of uncertainty. The bi-level model is a nondeterministic polynomial hard problem, and an interactive algorithm is designed. Then, the proposed model is applied to a specific example to demonstrate its practicality and efficiency. Sensitivity analyses of the proposed model are conducted for different scenarios. The results can help the government devise a more strategic mining quota scheme focused on environmental protection and colliery mining quotas. Thus, the proposed model can not only propose reasonable mining quotas, but also ensure sustainable development.