Taking risks, failing and learning from our mistakes in the virtual world is key to reducing risk and creating value in mining, agreed the speakers at the Digitization and innovation in mining: The impact on investments session at this year’s Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada (PDAC) convention.

The annual 2021 PDAC convention was hosted on a virtual platform this year between March 8-11 but still featured all of the sessions and programing PDAC is known for. This year, a particular emphasis was placed on building diversity and improving environmental, social and governance (ESG) performance and the risks faced by companies that do not invest in responsible exploration practices.

The wide-ranging Digitization and innovation in mining: The impact on investments session on March 10 was capably chaired by Angelina Mehta, Laurentian Bank Securities, and covered numerous impacts of introducing digital technologies in mining on people, performance and profit.

The session began with a conversation between panelists Colin Williams, Executive Industry Solution Architect, Mining Industry, IBM and Kalev Ruberg, Vice President Future and Chief Innovation Officer, Tech Resources, on digitization and decisions making. This was followed by a discussion between Mark Hannan, Asset Heavy Digital Venture Lead, Global Commercial Busines Worldwide, Shell, Amanda Truscott, Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Rithmik Solutions and Samuel Cantor, Senior Geologists with Minerva Intelligence Inc. on specific artificial intelligence (AI) systems and how they are being used. The final speaker was Michelle Ash, Chief Executive Officer, Dassault Systemes GEOVIA who wrapped up the session with comments about using technology to reduce risk and build value.

“One of the biggest impacts we can have with digital technologies is to help us reduce risk,” said Ash, “What I mean by that is our ability to design and develop in the virtual world to then simulate and create a virtual twin or model.”

Smart risks in the virtual world create value in the real world

Digital twins are virtual models of real-world systems created and manipulated in the virtual world. An example of a digital twin many people are familiar with is a flight simulator used to train pilots without leaving the ground. In mining, the virtual experiences twins, as we call,  are used to model everything from individual truck maintenance to modeling underground workings to creating entire mining operations in four-dimensions.

“Rather than have to try something for the first time and build it physically – as we know in mining sometimes that can be quite expensive – we can actually model and find out exactly how it’s going to perform, what the impacts are going to be and then, with a much greater level of certainty, move forward,” said Ash.

Mehta challenged the assembled panelists to provide practical examples of how digital technologies and artificial intelligence (AI) systems create value, reduce risk and impact company culture.

Rithmik Solutions Amanda Truscott described how her company used their Asset Health Analyze (AHA) system to create customized virtual twins of mining equipment using AI and “a few weeks of data” to diagnose and prevent failures.

“There were rod bearing failures on CAT 793Ds that were costing a mine in Western Canada about $4 million a year because the only warning they had been getting for those was a CAT-generated alarm just a few minutes before failure,” said Truscott, “AHA found indicators of those failures 10 hours in advance.”

Ash supplied a recent example from GEOVIA who recently modeled a block cave operation for a company.

“As mining companies have more and more pressure to go underground and have lower impacts on the environment and on communities, one of the first options is to look toward block caving,” said Ash, “But the initial investment of block caves often is quite high, so boards and management teams want to be cautious and want to be certain that option is right for their orebody.”

Ash described how GEOVIA used their Virtual Twin Experience platform to model the block cave, including the draw points, the infrastructure and how the ore and other materials would flow over time.

“That was able to then demonstrate the boundaries or the envelope in which that would be successful,” said Ash, “So that when management went to the board with much greater confidence to say to the board ‘this is going to be a successful option for us’. In that sense creating a huge amount of value for those particular customers.”

“The wonderful thing with AI,” said Ash, “Is that it can then give us as insights beyond simulation issues into the sorts of topics or cautions or issues we should be looking at and ask questions about.”

A culture of change

Another important issue addressed during the session was the effect that introducing digital technologies and AI can have on people within a business and how to build company cultures that are comfortable with and welcoming of new technologies.

IBM’s Colin Williams said that it is vital for boards to communicate both their passion and their vision for digital inclusion.

“Form a board perspective we have to drive change,” said Williams, “It’s about people, it’s not just about technology. It’s about people incorporating digital into their day-to-day working environments.”

Ash agreed, stating that the mining industry has a great tradition and long history of cultural change and using the progress she has seen in health, safety and environmental management as examples.

“Covid has just underlined that,” said Ash, “The ability for mining companies to pivot in what really was one quarter last year and introduce new practices, new safety measures and for workforces and our entire industry to take those on board shows how good we are at changing culture and changing practices and I think we need to harness that and apply that to their technologies.”

“We can build on the great capabilities that we have, and I think we can rapidly then pivot to solving problems using digital technologies,” said Ash.

To learn more about how digital technologies can reduce risk and improve mining performance, stay tuned for more posts and articles on these topics in the Sustainable Mining Network.

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