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Celebrating success: Angela Rodrigues

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Amira Global is thrilled to spotlight PhD candidate Angela Rodrigues. Angela is working on Amira Global Project P1202 Far-field and near-mine footprints: Finding and defining the next generation of Tier-1 deposits, and has just been announced as a finalist in the ANZ Women in AI (Mining) Awards. We chatted to Angela about her role with Amira Global and her success in the awards.

What is your role in P1202?

I am a researcher within P1202 (PhD candidate at Monash University). The project has several industry partners and sponsors: Newcrest Mining, AngloAmerican, BHP, Boliden, Freeport, Merdeka, Mount Isa Mines, Vale, Newmont, Rio Tinto, Fortescue, Codelco, FMG, and Teck Resources. Most PhD students, like myself, work closely with one of the sponsors to develop workflows tailored to their needs, and I work in partnership with Newcrest Mining. My study site is the Waivaka Corridor, a 5-km segment of porphyry systems, located in the Namosi District, Fiji.

How is your PhD contributing to the P1202?

P1202 is a multidisciplinary approach that aims to develop new tools for cost-effective exploration programs and resource assessment. The research team work to facilitate new and refined tools for fertility assessment for several types of ore deposits (porphyry, epithermal, skarns) and at different scales: regional, district and near-mine scale. My research specifically relates to the development of exploration tools for porphyry-copper deposits at the near-mine scale. Particularly, I work with the application of numerous data analysis techniques and computer vision to drill hole derived data, such as spectral data and assay data. These objective techniques aim to reduce the amount of time required to identify a resource opportunity and are designed to provide machine-support to project geologists responsible for interpreting the drill hole data.

What is the topic of your PhD?

The topic of my PhD is the Automated mineral and textural extraction from hyperspectral data.

How is your PhD contributing to the benefit of the mining sector?

My PhD project aims to create machine-supported workflows and algorithms to assist in the interpretation of hyperspectral and assay data collected from drill holes at the exploration stage. The contribution to the mining sector aligns with the P1202 aims – to design tools and workflows for industry that allow for cost-effective exploration and resource assessment. Such tools aim to reduce the time between drilling and resource discovery.  They are objective and support the geological interpretation.

The application of deep learning to hyperspectral data is still in its infancy, but it is widely applied within the remote sensing science. A good example of that is the processing of remotely sensed hyperspectral data to ascertain and classify land cover; you can now build accurate models that are able to identify for example vegetation from building areas, from water courses. However, the use of deep learning for mineral identification is still a relatively new area, from which scientists have still a lot to learn about. And that is the novel approach that I work on.

Have you enjoyed working within the Amira Project as you study? Has it contributed to your studies?

What I like the most about this project is that it brings together the best of two worlds – academia and industry. I am able to conduct research on the field that I truly enjoy and at the same time I know that my research has an application for industry. It gives me a good sense of accomplishment. Another aspect that I like about it is that it made me grew so much, both professionally and personally. We, as students, get to engage with industry and academic peers, and we get to learn about the industry needs, as well as get to learn from some of the best professionals and researchers in our area. The mentorship that has been provided to me over these years is incomparable!

What does the Women in AI Award recognise?

The Women in AI is a global network of professional women in the area of Artificial Intelligence. Their mission is to work towards gender-inclusive AI that benefits society, by educating the upcoming generation of female leaders in the field, and by increasing our representation in AI.

This inaugural Women in AI Awards represents the commitment to support and reward the excellence of AI female professionals and experts within Australia and New Zealand. The judging criteria are, amongst others, the innovation of our work, the leadership and inspiring potential and the ability of our AI to do good for the global society.

How do you feel about being announced as a finalist?

As a PhD candidate, I am stunned that I got this selection! I am among an exquisite group of female experts in AI (university lecturers, and other experienced professionals), and I cannot wait to meet them all on the Award night. I feel very fortunate that my work as a PhD student has led me to this nomination. I am thankful to JewelRock for powering this event, as well as to the funding and brilliant mentorship that I’ve benefited from being part of an AMIRA project, including my closer Newcrest Mining mentors.

Advantages and Challenges of Precise Positioning

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Amira Global is hosting a Spatial Science in Resources: Challenges and Opportunities workshop tomorrow, December 3. In the lead-up to this exciting event, we asked QUT Research Fellow Dr Charles Wang about the advantages and challenges of precise positioning based on his experience with the SBAS test-bed. The project is a collaboration of QUT academics and Wenco International Mining with supports from FrontierSI and GA.

Please tell us a little bit about yourself and your research activities at QUT

I am a Research Fellow at QUT in the School of Computer Science. I have always worked in precise positing, looking at areas such as:

  • how to improve the performance, accuracy, reliability, availability of the positioning solution
  • how to improve the efficiency and affordability for mass market users – correction delivery
  • what precise positioning brings to the emerging applications – environmental modelling and monitoring, Intelligent Transportation System (ITS), Industrial IoT and mobile phones.

You were involved in the SBAS test-bed with Wencomine, could you tell us about the project? What were the goals?

The project was predominantly looking into GNSS for mine vehicle tracking. It is widely adopted technology in surface mine operations for fleet management, mine safety and environment protection. The current solutions (Standalone GNSS positioning) had limitations such as vehicle position jumps (tens to hundreds of meters), outages and inability to separate/identify grouped vehicles. This generated lots of false positives (alarms) in vehicle safety collision detections.

The objectives of the trials and subsequent data analyses were to examine the benefits of the SBAS test-bed services over the standard GPS/GLONASS services in three major use cases:

  • surface vehicle fleet management
  • V2X surface mine safety operations
  • selected optimal mine vehicle operations.

Was the project successful in achieving those goals? What were the drawbacks?

We successfully met our goals in a number of the following key areas:

  • Trial-2 evaluated the benefits of SBAS L1 service for the existing Wenco terminal device (TREK-753) running low-cost U-blox LEA5S GPS chipset. It has been shown from both stationary and kinematic tests that the SBAS enabled solution provides marginal improvements in the horizontal direction and noticeable improvements in the vertical direction when compared with the standalone GNSS solution for low-cost system.
  • Demonstrated the use of SBAS services for V2X safety operation by conducting analysis of warnings between two vehicles on multiple collision scenarios. The results have shown improvements in the SBAS solutions (particularly Precise Point Positioning or PPP) has helped in maintaining stable relative distances while parking side-by-side in challenging environments.
  • Demonstrated improved Rise and Run matrix calculation, which is commonly used in contract mining for the horizontal and vertical distance travelled by haul trucks. The calculation based on standalone GNSS could have large discrepancy in the “Rise” distance travelled (up to four times) and 9.55% differences in the “Run” distance travelled compared to the reference solution (RTK). The SBAS solutions offer more accurate estimate of Rise and Run distances travelled, in particularly, PPP is considered to have the same accuracy as the RTK solution with differences less than 3% in vertical.

In terms of drawbacks, there were a couple of things that did not go to plan:

  • Field installation and testing was restricted as it is an operating mine
  • There is a limited number of GNSS receivers capable of the second generation Dual Frequency Multi Constellation (DFMC), SBAS as well as PPP
  • The correction supports GPS and Galileo only. At the time of testing, the Galileo constellation was nowhere near the full operational capability. We would probably get a better result if we do the test right now

Do you see any other applications for SBAS in the mining industry?

I believe the first one is autonomous haul truck and mining operation, as precise positioning can achieve accuracies up to 10cm. The second is predictive maintenance. Instead of vehicles coming back on fixed schedules, sensors and location tracking can result in the vehicles returning for maintenance only when required. Finally, if staff are fitted with personal tracking devices there is increased onsite safety.

What work needs to be done to enable industry to make the most of SBAS positioning in the future?

You cannot realise all the benefits simply by switching the SBAS signals on, you have to look at the system as a whole. Apart from the SBAS corrections and positioning solutions, you have to look at hardware and software implementations. In our project, Wencomine has developed collision avoidance tool based on extended GPS positioning and they had to make a lot of compromises due to the errors they found with the standalone positioning. Either they have to smooth things out to suppress the errors or make a lot of assumptions to factoring in tens of metres of positioning errors. A lot of these strategies have to be changed.

How could the resources industry benefit from the new technologies?

In a lot of use cases, higher positioning performance (accuracy, reliability and availability) leads to improvement in the efficiency and effectiveness or the workflow. These will improve the productivity and reduce the operational cost. In one of the SBAS economic benefit studies, the improved haul truck efficiency (as driver and operator place greater faith in safety mechanisms) resulted in a reduction in fuel and labour cost by allowing travel at higher speed. Overall, there is an estimated $1.6B in benefits to the resources sector over 30 years according to the EY report.

What excites you most about SBAS?

The free to air satellite correction broadcast, in particular PPP. Mines are often limited with internet and wi-fi connection, making correction delivery and tracking difficult.

What potential drawbacks do you see with SBAS

There is a lack of DFMC and PPP enabled receivers, especially low-cost. For instance, you could not use a professional-grade receiver for onsite personnel safety as the cost and size is too great. There is also a PPP convergence time – between 10 minutes and one hour – that may be an issue in some cases.

SBAS: What it means for the resources sector

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Amira Global is hosting a three-part webinar series, Power of Positioning in Resources. The final webinar, Datums & Reference Frames, is on Thursday, 26 November. This Geoscience Australia-led webinar will provide a primer on the Datums and Reference frames that are used for delivering modern positioning services under the Positioning Australia Program.

With SBAS coming online in Australia within the next 12 months, we spoke to FrontierSI CEO Dr Graeme Kernich about SBAS and the impact for the resources sector.

Q1. Who are FrontierSI and what role do they play industry?

We are a research and innovation organisation that works with government, universities, and industry to apply spatial technologies and capabilities to broader challenges. Our expertise lies in facilitating multi-party, multi-disciplinary collaborations; we act as a trusted advisor, helping to lead the development of solutions and bring together the depth of the expertise required to solve complex research and innovation problems.

Q2. How did Australia and New Zealand get our SBAS

There were numerous factors, including strong support and leadership from the Australian and New Zealand governments at all levels, and in particular Geoscience Australia and Land Information New Zealand. An initial investment in an SBAS testbed by Australia and New Zealand governments in 2016-17 led to a significant number of successful demonstration projects across key industry sectors.  FrontierSI managed the testbed projects and coordinated the development of the economic case. The value in building the SBAS infrastructure and consequent positive effects on industry and society were well documented through these case studies. There was a strong argument in favour of the technology from numerous sectors such as aviation, agriculture, maritime and transport. It was ultimately seen to be of benefit and proposal for an operational system was accepted.

Q3. How has positioning technology in Australia progressed in the last 5-10 years.

I think its progressed enormously. We are seeing greater accuracy from the launch of new satellites and improvements in the integration of satellite system infrastructure. At a consumer level, there are a lot more applications opening to the market; it is part of everyone’s smartphone. Australia has rapidly adopted precise and mobile positioning in many industries thanks in part to a strong growth of the use of spatial technologies. With new precise positioning services such as SBAS continuing to be implemented, the cost of accessing these services is reducing, and through new services, sub-metre positioning will have fewer barriers to entry for many use cases; as well as coverage anywhere within Australia, New Zealand, and our maritime zones. In conjunction we will see free access to precise positioning in the range of a 3-10cm level service to users anywhere within mobile internet coverage.

Q4. What are the economic benefits of SBAS to the resources sector?

Aside from the financial benefits, SBAS will enable more precise positioning in open-pit mines. Industry will see improvements in the way autonomous vehicles work on mine sites; improved routing, navigating and collision avoidance. There will be greater safety at the workforce level as tracking remote workers becomes more efficient. The mining sector use cases also identified benefits such as improved equipment availability and associated operating efficiencies.  In terms of economic benefits the SBAS testbed economics report quantified $1.58 billion of anticipated benefit from SBAS over a 30-year period, mainly through operating expenditure savings such as better material management, fuel and labour savings, and reduced haul truck vehicle downtime.

Q5. What can organisations or individuals do now to prepare for operational use of SBAS?

Firstly, get involved with Geoscience Australia and FrontierSI’s outreach campaign on the delivery of positioning services. We will be engaging over the next month or so, through a confidential process, seeking to capture use cases and requirements from across the resources sector, to ensure that needs are catered by future positioning services.  Positioning data streams are currently available from Geoscience Australia, and FrontierSI can also assist on SBAS readiness, software and hardware integration, and signal performance baselines, based on our experiences during the SBAS test-bed and other demonstrators. There has been no recent announcement regarding when to expect the SBAS signals to come online, but the public tender documents indicate a potential 2021 return, at the earliest. Given these timeframes, business should be considering how to build positioning into their strategies. We recommend getting advice to understand how the SBAS signals will provide advantages in terms of building new applications, or how to integrate existing signals and the new receivers that are accompanying them into the business.

Q6. What work needs to be done to make industry to make the most of precise positioning in the future?

As the precision of the data collection methods increases, it is vitally important to use the correct coordinate systems which underpin every map and data layer, keeping everything aligned as expected, and allowing for the best decision making. I think its fundamentally an education and awareness process right now. Industry – and individuals – need to understand how precise positioning systems and the modern coordinate system can be best used to improve their businesses. Keeping up with the planned technology changes and mapping these into organisational strategies for improved decision making, operational efficiencies and safety is key.

Q7. What excites you about SBAS?

It will transform industries, including the resources sector.  I expect changes in transport logistics and aviation and the way positioning is used. It will be exciting to see how it’s going to support the autonomous vehicle market as positioning is one of the critical inputs in safety. There will also be new applications for the mobile phone-user. The availability and accessibility of more accurate positioning signals really means it is going to have a strong impact on the consumer and society. We are looking forward to seeing how more accurate positioning plays out in personal mobile phone applications.

Fireside chat with Prince ofori Amponsah about the West African eXploration Initiative

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With the next stage of the West African eXploration Initiative (WAXI) starting soon, Amira Global spoke to module leader for the basin research group, Prince ofori Amponsah from the University of Ghana.

Q: What is your role in this stage of WAXI, and have you been involved in the project in the past?

I am currently the module leader for the basin research group. An arm of WAXI 4 which will look at the Neoproterozoic to Cenozoic age basins in West Africa. I have been involved in WAXI 2 as a Master Student and WAXI 3 as a PhD student.

Q: Who will you be working with?

Yes, I will be working with a team all over Africa, Australia, France and the Netherlands.  They are Prof. Mark Jessell, Prof. Kim Hien, Prof Steau Beau, Prof. Atta-Peters, Prof. Osumane Wane, Prof. Alaine Koumalane, Dr. Frank Van Ruitenbeek, Prof. Marion Bamford, Dr Zubair Jinnah, Abigail Ayiwei and Stefano Salvi.

 Q: What is your speciality, and how is this being applied in the WAXI project?

My speciality is in Structural Geology and Metallogeny. It has helped the WAXI project in two ways. My PhD studies in the Wa-Lawra belt has helped Azumah Resources Limited as to where the company must focus its search for the commodity of interest and has helped the company increase its Global gold inventory from 2.0 to 2.8 Moz of Gold.

 Although I will be leading the whole basin research administratively and scientifically, I will be more focussed on the basin-basement relationships and architecture and well as the metallogenic aspect of the work.

Q: What do you believe are the benefits of the WAXI project for industry, and West Africa? What prompted you to become involved?

The WAXI project to me has helped industry to better understand the systems (tectonics and mineral systems) and the Craton in which they are exploring for various commodities. Industry has benefitted immensely from its capacity building exercises. Thus, via industry-related courses which have trained workers in various fields such as structural mapping, exploration geochemistry and structural Geophysics. WAXI has also provided industry as well as its partners’ 3D models of the craton on various scales.

Q: What do you hope the project will achieve?

At the end of the day we better understand every inch of ground on the West African Craton, be it mineral and petroleum systems, tectonics, metamorphic processes and well as sedimentary processes. This will go a long way for nations in West Africa to understand the true potential of what they have and how the resources will be harnessed in a better and sustainable way.

>>Expressions of interest are open for WAXI Stage 4

WAXI – Virtual Showcase

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The West African eXploration Initiative (WAXI) focuses on the mineral potential of the West African Craton. Over a 12 year period, 73 partner organisations have collaborated to:

  • Enhance the exploration potential of the African Craton
  • Help train the next generation of West African explorers
  • Assist local geological surveys and universities in the region in their role of providing pre-competitive data and information

Join us for a two hour virtual showcase to hear more about this amazing program and find out about the next stage of work which is due to start in early 2021.

When: Wednesday November 18, 2020 
Time: 05:00 (EST) | 07:00 (MST) | 12:00 (GMT) |20:00 (AWST) | 23:00 (ADST)

TO REGISTER CONTACT ADELE SEYMON

#AmiraGlobal #FutureResources #WestAfrica #Enabling Futures 

The next stage in West African exploration: WAXI 4

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WAXI first began in November 2006 and has involved 73 partner organisations over its 12 years. The next stage is due to start in late 2020.

Amira Global WAXI Program Director Adele Seymon said news of Stage 4 is well timed with exploration conference African Down Under being held in Perth next week.

P934C WAXI Stage 4 will focus on West African mineral systems, particularly the Archean mineralisation and architecture, and the impacts of earlier architectures on the development of mineral systems in the Birmian, the Panafrican and the overlying intracratonic basins.

P934C is a three-year project that will be led by Professor Mark Jessell, Centre for Exploration Targeting, University of Western Australia.

P934C overview

The West African Exploration Initiative is an ambitious research and training program based on cooperation between most of the major stakeholders in the West African minerals sector: research institutions, geological surveys, governments, and the minerals industry. It is focused on the mineral potential of the West African Craton.

“The earlier stages of WAXI focussed primarily on the Paleoproterozoic granite-greenstone terranes of the West African Craton,” Ms Seymon said.

“WAXI 4 aims at furthering this work to unravel the making of mineral systems not only in the Birimian terranes, but also in the neighbouring Archean, Pan-African Meso-Proterozoic and Phanerozoic basins. The key overarching philosophy will be to characterise and evaluate the role of both the lithospheric and crustal architecture on the development of mineral systems through time.”

Objectives

  • Enhance the exploration potential of the African Craton through an integrated program of research and data gathering into its “anatomy”
  • Help train the next generation of West African explorers
  • Assist local geological surveys and universities in the region in their role of providing pre-competitive data and information.

WAXI Fast Facts

WAXI has operated in 12 countries over 12 years. Here is some of its stats:

  • Stages 1-3: November 2006–May 2019
  • Total funding to date: US$8.5M
    • US$7.5M industry support
    • US$1M government cash
  • It is conducted in two languages (French and English)
  • 73 partner organisations over 12 years
  • 95 Postdoc, PhD, MSc, and Hons projects
  • 650GB exploration geoscience database; the WAXI GIS now has 280+ distinct layers (over 80 of which are unique to WAXI); plus, a Geodynamic Atlas of time-characterised data layers allowing arbitrary time-slices to be calculated for key datasets
  • 5,600 person-days of technical training in West Africa (36 courses)
  • 650,000 km2 of geophysically constrained geological map

Congratulations to the WAXI team on the next stage of the project.

Want to know more? Click HERE to find out about an upcoming virtual showcase.

For more information or lodge an Expression of Interest please contact Adele Seymon.

Have you been involved in WAXI? We would love to hear your stories. Please contact Sara Sulway with pictures or news!