Due to the fact that the conventional multiple attribute decision making methods used to solve the optimization of development system have many drawbacks, an optimization model of the development system is established in this paper based on the catastrophe optimization theory. Taking the development system of the Xinqiao Iron Mine from open-pit to underground as an example, a synthetic assessment model is established. During the evaluation process, many factors of the development system are taken into account, such as the economic and technical factors, the geological conditions, the ventilation and environment protection conditions. All evaluations are sorted by their importance as the first step and then a layered array of the evaluations is established. After that, the recursive calculation is made separately based on the catastrophe optimization theory. Then, the total function values for every method are obtained. The final function values in Xinqiao Iron Mine are 0.960, 0.976, 0.953 and the second model is shown to be the best.