1. EarthResourceML Background
Bruce Simons
GeoScience Victoria
"Kohonen Jarmo"
"Vuollo Jouni"
Lars-Kristian Stölen
"Cassard Daniel"
"Urvois Marc"
"Janjou Dominique"
"Serrano Jean-Jacques"
"Lyonnais Francois"

2. EarthResourceML Background
Information Model for Exchange
- Australian Mines Atlas
Scenarios
- deliver data to Australian Mines Atlas
- mineralisation investigation over an exploration lease
- land use planning to aid land use decisions.
- a mine site hazard study
- examine mineral system potential
Governance
- Australian Government Geologists Information Committee (GGIC)
- Mineral Occurrence Task Group
- Extension of GeoSciML
Demonstration

5. Mines Atlas Response provided annually centralised database
manually reformatted
limited information
Other ID
Name
Project
Status
State
Long
Lat
100 K Map
250 K Map
Loc. Method
Accuracy
Comments
Source
Commodities
Excel spreadsheets
Data dumbed down

6. More Data Available GeoScience Australia Mines Database Contains:
Reserves
Resources
Grade
Tonnage …

7. EarthResourceML Scenarios
an explorer conducts an investigation of mineralisation over an exploration lease
a land use planner investigates potential resources within an area to aid land use decisions.
a mining engineer conducts a mine site hazard study
a project generation geologist examines mineral system potential
deliver mineral occurrence data to the Australian geoscience mineral occurrence portal (Mines Atlas)
Mineral Occurrence Data Model Scenarios
Scenario 1
Description: an explorer conducts an investigation of mineralisation over an exploration lease
Carol is an exploration geologist for a medium-sized multi-commodity explorer in eastern Australia. She is investigating the potential for gold mineralisation under cover to the north of known gold occurrences, as well as any opportunities for the company to earn additional income from secondary commodities in their area of interest.
She reviews the previous work related to the tenements her company has just acquired over a large area in Victoria and NSW. She searches for known mineral occurrences on the tenements, the past operators of the workings and the reasons for tenement relinquishment. Most of the information she has accessed is from exploration licence and other similar reports, but there are also a few university theses describing various aspects of the geology. The information she finds includes:
details about the mineral occurrences, their characteristics, and their association with structures and host rocks;
historic plans of workings
3D models of workings and deposit geology and mineralisation
data pertaining to metallurgy; and
production statistics, including average grades and grade distribution (spatial variation and continuity).
Carol also notes that copper concentrate and kaolin have been produced from the area covered by the tenement. The kaolin workings pique her interest, so she searches for any data about its quality, namely its purity and the types of impurities present.
Her next step will be to review the nature of the gold occurrences and their ‘signature’, to predict areas where undiscovered mineralisation may occur. She notes there are two main types of occurrence: ‘low sulphide Au–quartz vein’ (a type she knows as ‘Mesozonal orogenic gold’), and ‘disseminated’ gold mineralisation.
She superimposes the locations of the mineral occurrences onscreen in her GIS package over the geological units, structures and areas of alteration. Carol then overlays the location of shafts and surface workings, to visually assess the spatial relationships between the mineralisation and geological features. She may further assess this information in a 3D modelling package.
She follows this review up with a more refined statistical assessment within the GIS to understand the strength of the relationship between the gold occurrences, structures and host rocks.
She uses past production statistics as a proxy for the gold endowment to differentiate between the occurrences. Many of the workings have no statistics, though, so Carol looks at other data, such as geochemical results and mineralogical characteristics of each occurrence, to better understand the mineralised system and the potential for large undiscovered deposits.
When she has compiled the data she wants, she exports it to a statistical package for further analysis. She also creates a map of the gold distribution and a report figure showing the correlation between host rock, gold endowment and mineral deposit type to take to the board meeting next week.
At the end of the investigation, Carol presents a report to the company’s management detailing her findings, which shows the most prospective areas for gold occurrences of the type they are interested in, as well as options for additional income from the kaolin deposits.
Scenario 2
Description: a land use planner investigates potential resources within an area to aid land use decisions.
Adam needs to provide an estimate of the dollar value of potential gold mineralisation occurring on land currently home to a Box Ironbark Forest as part of the land use planning process. Predicting this value will involve extracting data from a mineral occurrence database that captures the deposit styles within the area and their attributes (including metallurgical attributes).
The area is to the north of Bendigo, an area known for three important types of deposit. Each of the deposit types has a specific structural style, geophysical and geochemical signature, and alteration signature (as seen in regolith and lithogeochemistry). These characteristics, along with the depth of cover rocks, influence the mining methods that are suitable for each deposit, and hence the cost to extract the gold.
He uses production figures, including recovered vs. in situ grades, to determine existing and potential metal endowment from the mine workings to gain an idea of the value of the potential mineralisation in the Bendigo Zone. He then estimates the value of probable remaining gold based on the size of the area, its potential to host occurrences of a similar size to those further south, the potential metal endowment of those deposits and the depth of cover.
Scenario 3
Description: a mining engineer conducts a mine site hazard study.
Peter is a senior engineer at a mine in the Bendigo area, tasked with designing the processing facilities to support the company’s new decline. He needs to know the location of any historic workings on their Mining Lease as part of their OH&S assessment, so that the new plant is built on stable ground and that people and equipment moving around the site do not fall into any existing shafts.
Peter searches the mineral occurrences database for mine data, historic plans and reports to determine where shafts, shallow drives and other mining features occur within the Mining Lease. He reviews this and develops a plan (perhaps in 3D) which allows him to assess where openings to workings are located, as well as the underground extent of these workings. He notes that one of the proposed sites for the tailings dam has a shallow drive under it, which rules it out, but that the site for their new ore processing facility is in an area away from historic workings.
Additionally, the company are establishing a mineral reserve, so they need to identify what has already been mined out. Peter extracts data relating to mine workings and past production records, and locates them on historic mine plans. These help to delineate what has been taken from which level through past mining activity, so that a more accurate mineral reserve can be calculated.
Scenario 4
Description: a project generation geologist examines mineral system potential.
Exploration Company, ExploreBig, explores for porphyry Cu-Au, but only in terrains where the mineral systems were responsible for the deposition and preservation of what they term ‘giant’ ore deposits.
Clare, a project generation geologist, sits in ExploreBig’s Canadian exploration office. She enters the GeoScience Victoria website and begins her search of data sourced from the Mineral Occurrence database.
She does a ‘find me” query in the Mineral Systems part of the Min Occ database – searching for:
the presence of an island arc or a convergent plate boundary (genesis process and environment);
geological units from I-type intrusions (which are either a potential source or a host of the mineralisation);
large scale structures (especially strike-slip faults) which are potential paths for the porphyry mineralisation;
porphyry-related (including porphyry-related skarn) Cu and Au prospects or occurrences
She assesses this information for suitability of this combination of tectonic setting and favourable geological units in the State of Victoria to contain mineral systems which include Cu-Au porphyry deposits.

8. EarthResourceML Governance
Australian/NZ Government Geologists Information Committee (GGIC)
GGIC Mineral Occurrence Task Group
Commenced work in November 2006
MineralOccurrences v1.0 released March 2007
Tested in AuScope portal June 2009
EarthResourceML v1.1 released July 2009
Production services by GSV, PIRSA, MRT, …
Consumed by AuScope Portal (
Preferable to be governed by CGI (GeoSciML)
Requires uptake by International community (eg INSPIRE)

9. EarthResourceML Demonstration
AuScope Portal
WFS responses

10. AuScope Portal http://portal.auscope.org/gmap.html

16. GeoScience Victoria EarthResourceML example WFS queries
MINERAL OCCURRENCE
MAPPEDFEATURE
MINE
MININGFEATUREOCCURRENCE
COMMODITY
MININGACTIVITY