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The modern trends in advance of information support tools for the mining industry call for an integrated solution of technological problems based on a common software platform to ensure prompt development of a novel functional or adaptation of the available one to mining conditions. In this case, of key importance becomes the ideology to develop an information system capable to realize functions of the platform. Relying on more than 20 years experience in evolution of MINEFRAME mining geology information system (MGIS), there are grounds to suggest that the optimal way is to create an object-oriented platform capable to model and to control mining and geological objects in order to grant designers a novel application software for access to the basic MGIS functional. Implementation of this approach allows solving such important problems as higher stabilization of software operation by means of screened access to software tools of the basic level as well as promotion of MGIS functional advance owing to a feasibility to design application programs with the use of the procedures library and the platform functions.

The authors show the basic ways of making hard mineral mining with open pit method more efficient. The article gives a review of research aimed at improvement of open pit mining methods, intensification of mining, enhancement of mine safety and final product quality control (in terms of Bakchar iron ore deposit and coal deposits located in the Kuznetsk and Kansk-Achinsk Basins).

With basics of the resource reproduction and comprehensive extraction of ores have been described, the authors offer mining techniques, based on standard engineering solutions, to convert low quality ores to a quality product in any geological and mining conditions. It is found to be efficient to reproduce low grade georesources with mixed physico-technical and physicochemical technologies. The implementation of the resource-reproducing techniques requires that the baseline design includes the determined conditions for low quality ore re-excavation and that the accepted engineering solutions are realized at all stages of the comprehensive exploitation of a mineral deposit.

The authors analyzed various criteria that are used in different classifications of mining methods and systems. It is shown that today’s complex geomechanical situation of mining at large depths and wide application of mobile machinery to mineral exploitation has brought to nothing the erstwhile practical importance of many geotechnologies. The modern trend-based classification of the underground ore mining methods is proposed.

The mining conditions in Yuzhny district of Zapolyarny Mine are reported. The alternative mining technologies for the additionally explored mine field are considered. The results of modeling and evaluation of stress-strain state in rocks under mining by the discussed mining technologies are cited.

Features of the condition of underground mines are presented and basic principles for developing ore mining technology are formulated. It is noted that the main direction for improving mining operations in nonferrous metal deposits is development of mining systems with stowing by solidifying mixtures with waste utilization from mining and metallurgical industries based on the complexes of self-propelled machinery. In order to extract lowvaluable ores under conditions of great depths new variants of breast chamber mining systems, and sublevel caving systems with leaving rock intercalations in the bowels are considered. For ferrous metallurgy mines of the region the expediency is demonstrated for radical reconstruction of technology with development of mining system by sublevel caving with end ore drawing and comprehensive use of self-propelled equipment.

A set of problems is considered for planning underground mining of ore deposits. Achievements are noted in domestic mining science in the field of improving planning methods and design parameters for underground mines. Principles in the development of planning theory for mining enterprises at the contemporary level are formulated.

Ore bodies with a dip from steep to gentle are being worked at mines of Gornaya Shorii, at the Kaz and Sheregesh deposits. Thus, at the Sheregesh section consisting of two limbs: steep with a dip angle of about 70 ° and thickness 20-50 m and gentle with a dip angle of 5-20 ° and thickness up to 70 m (Fig. 1). The depth from the surface in the steep limb is 320 m and in the gentle 390 m. The steep part is located within the level being mined and the gentle with the level being developed. Primary mining of the steep part of the deposit will lead to underworking the rock mass of the roof of the ore body and will thereby complicate mining the gentle limb, especially in the curved part of the ore body. The underworked overhanging mass during mining in the gentle part can peel off and crush by its mass the mine workings and blocks in the curved part of the ore body. A complex geomechanical situation requiring a thorough examination is created. As applied to the described ore body, the Mining Institute, Siberian Branch, Russian Academy of Sciences, conducted investigations by the photoelastic method into modeling different variants of mining the ore body under consideration in its curved part (Fig. 2). The situation (models 1 and 2) when the curved part is mined with the use of a preliminar@ driven compensation chamber and when the curved part is mined as one chamber within each block along the strike (model 3) were modeled. Modeling was carried out on flat photoelastic models made of polystyrene SD-5. It was assumed that the elastic properties of the side blocks (syenites, skarns) and ore body (magnetite ore) are about the same. Mining the blocks was modeled by continuous holes. Three 1-mm-diameter holes simulating development workings were drilled in all three models in the curved part of the ore body in rocks of the hanging block above the gentle part. Conditions of geometric similarity were fulfilled when making and loading the models. The effect of gravitational forces was modeled. Loading of the models was done in a centrifuge. The radius of the latter to the lower section of the models was 1.0 m, the rotational speed was 150 rpm. Isochromatic fringe patterns in the models corresponding to the mining situations in Fig. 2 are given in Fig. 3a-c. It can be concluded from an examination of the isochromatic fringe patterns that a smaller concentration of stresses in the mass around the stoping is observed on model 1, when t'mal working of the steep limb of the deposit is carried out with a compensation chamber, and the gentle limb within the curved part is not mined. In that case high stresses are observed only in the floor of the compensation chamber (see Fig. 3). Small regions of low stresses adjoin the compensation chamber, in its upper part, from both sides. In the chamber roof there is also a zone of low stress, with the exception of the corner point on the side of the footwalt. It is interesting that in this situation high stresses are not observed in the region of the comer point on the side of the hanging wall. The stress field around the holes simulating the development workings corresponds to uniaxial, oriented strictly vertically. The isochromatic fringe pattern around the thin holes corresponds to the optical pattern in circular photoelastic sensors. As in the latter, the axes of symmetry of the pattern near the holes in the model coincide with the orientation of the quasi-principal stress at these points of the model. In the case of model 2, a considerable concentration of compressive stresses is observed in various sections of the rock mass around the chambers. The regions of low stresses are located on both sides of the vertical compensation slot and on the side of the hanging wall of the chamber. Within this region are located three holes corresponding to the development workings. Stress concentration is not observed around the two right holes, and a change in orientation of the acting stresses is observed around the extreme left hole. Whereas on model 1 a greater principal stress is oriented vertically in this zone, on model 2 it