Mineral Resource Estimation

  • PAPUA NEW GUINEA (PORT MORESBY): 10-14/6/24

Course Brief

This course has been designed for geologists and mining engineers involved with or are interested in becoming involved with mineral resource estimation for prospect evaluation, grade control or long-term planning.  The course requires a knowledge of geology and/or mine planning but does not require prior knowledge of geostatistics.  Participants should have computer skills associated with geology modelling, grade control or mine planning software.

The course requires the use of Microsoft Excel and geostatistical modelling software to complete the practical portion. Participants can bring their own commercial software or use ours, which will be provided for practical exercises.

Course Content

  • Introduction to modelling and its purpose.
  • Role and responsibilities of the mineral resource modeller.
  • Exploratory Data Analysis – Data Quality, Geology and Descriptive Statistics
  • Modifying Data-Domaining, Top cutting and Compositing
  • Spatial Relationships and Variography
  • Estimation Methodologies (Nearest Neighbour, Inverse Distance and Linear Regression-Kriging)
  • Choosing Estimation Parameters-block sizes and search neighbourhoods
  • Estimation
  • Validation
  • Classification
  • Documentation
  • Workflows for various commercial software or GSLIB.