Amira Global is celebrating its Members, new and old. Today we shine the spotlight on Lithodat.

Q1. What would you like the Amira community to know about your business?

Lithodat’s vision is to provide explorationists with global geoscientific databases and analytics to decrease the time taken to gain exploration insights in order to simplify and de-risk resource discoveries. LithoSurfer, Lithodat’s unique browser-based exploration data platform offers the most detailed global, standardised geochemistry and the largest thermochronology and geochronology data repository available. Very detailed analytical data and advanced analytical tools enable the user to query and visualise data through time and create interactive graphs on the fly.

Our platform follows FAIR data principles, making all data easily Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reproducible. Our platform offers the perfect solution to ingest all exploration data in one relational database, making cross-data analytics possible. This helps in finding new patterns in data and may lead to the next big discovery.

Q2. What is the problem that, if solved, would make the biggest difference in our industry?

Billions of dollars are currently spent globally in the resource industry to develop interoperable data platforms for subsurface and outcrop data and yet there is still no universally accessible solution that allows easy access to decades of accumulated data. Although we are only part way to solving the problem, Lithodat’s mantra “butterflies and roses” drives us to make any and all types of spatial data usable.  

Q3. What do you think are the greatest challenges to successful collaboration and how can they be overcome?

Any long established industry like hydrocarbon and mining has the constant challenge of reviewing and embracing new and emerging technologies. Which one is safe and secure? Will it be fast? Will it save us time and money? Lithodat helps our customers by guiding them through the whole process of transitioning to our fully cloud hosted data solution making sure all understand the technical and pragmatic aspects so they can use our system with confidence.  

Q4. Innovation has its origins in addressing challenges and leveraging R&D – what are your success stories?

Lithodat has teamed up with the Australian Geochemistry Laboratories Network (AGN), an AuScope funded initiative to build a common public available platform for all geochemistry laboratories across Australia to upload, share, disseminate, visualise, analyse and download data produced by those labs. The AusGeochem platform (https://ausgeochem.auscope.org.au ) can be accessed by everyone for free and enables researchers as well as commercial users to access Australian produced geochemistry and geochronology data. 

Lithodat is also proud of being the first and only commercial entity that can mint International Generic Sample Numbers (IGSN) to any piece of geological information to help make them findable and reduce the chance of duplication. When coupled with our field app to create an IGSN at the time of collection it makes the process of tracking samples from the field to the lab fast and easy.   

Q5. From whom do you drawn your greatest inspiration?

Our greatest inspiration comes from our users and customers. Getting feedback on our data models and analytic features drives us to continue to refine and improve our platform. We use agile software development methodologies which allows us to rapidly test and validate these new ideas and deploy them without interruptions of our platform.