Department of Economics and Control Systems

The Department of Economics and Control Systems is a workplace that guarantees the study program Mineral Economics and study branch Economics and Control in Raw Materials Field. The Department educates future specialists who understand commodity markets,  are able to trade in commodities, and who are equipped to manage processes in prospecting, mining, and processing of raw materials not only economically but also in compliance with environmental policies.

Mineral Economics is a field in the focus of the Department’s scientific activities. To be specific, we analyze raw materials markets, study economics and financial conditions of mining enterprises. We also benchmark mining companies, assess innovation projects and risks, and focus on strategic management, circular economy, and industry 4.0. Moreover, keeping up with the times, we investigate the affordances of expanded and virtual reality to control processes, model and simulate processes and RFID applications.

The current orientations of the Department were set up in 2018. However, we are not a new workplace as we build on the traditions of the Institute of Economics and Control Systems. The Institute had been established during the reorganization of the Faculty of Mining and Geology in 1994, when the Institute was formed having merged the Department of Automatization in Mining and the Department of Economics and Control in Raw Material Field. The very history of the workplace dates back to early 1950s, when the Academic Year 1950/1951 introduced new courses of Work Organisation and Wage Setting into the study branches of Coal and Ores Operations.

An RFID laboratory has made an integral part of the Department since 2009. RFID laboratory focuses on the systems of automatic collection of data from RFID tags. The laboratory is also equipped with several devices reading different frequency zones, a conveyor belt, and a variable system of reading gate construction.