The present invention relates to the field of extracting resource(s) from
a particular location. In particular, the present invention relates to
the planning, design and processing related to a mine location in a
manner based on enhancing the extraction of material considered of value,
relative to the effort and/or time in extracting that material. The
present application discloses, amongst other things, a method of and
apparatus for determining slope constraints, determining a cluster of
material, determining characteristics of a selected portion of material,
analysing a selected volume of material, propagating dusters, forming
clusters, mine design, aggregation of blocks into collections or
clusters, splitting of waste and ore in clumps, determining a selected
group of blocks to be mined, clump ordering and identifying clusters for
pushback design.