Mining Companies Not Using Geographical Information Systems to Full Potential

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Ahead of his appearance at GIS Mining and Exploration conference 2012, Ben Somerville, Spatial Systems Manager at Thiess spoke to Mining IQ about why he thinks mining companies are not using Geographical Information Systems (GIS) to its fullest potential.

Mr Somerville’s role at Thiess is to understand how the company can leverage GIS to improve productivity. Having worked across construction and projects beyond mining, he said mining companies could explore GIS’s other applications.
 

“In mining, GIS can also be used as a human management and safety tool and can capture data about utility and road networks in mine sites.”

“For example, it can map out utility networks on a mine site which can prevent miners from digging into electricity wires and causing a black out.”
 

Currently the mining industry focuses on using GIS for environmental and asset management because of legislative requirements, but even within these duties, GIS can be used more effectively.

“In asset management, one aspect that often gets left off is understanding the connectivity of the network in a mine site. So for example if there’s a gas leak, where do you go to turn off the valve? Which valve do you turn off? These sorts of things can be easily answered by GIS systems.”

Whilst such issues are important, they are often pushed aside. Mr Somerville said traditional challenges like time and cost prevent mining companies from using GIS to its full potential.
 

“Although there are many things we’d like to do [with GIS] on a mine site, at the end of the day, we all have our day jobs to do.”

Part of the reason Mr Somerville is able to identify why mining companies are not maximising GIS is because of his experience at a GIS software provider.
 

This, coupled with his current role at Thiess where a centralised GIS is in place, help him understand how companies can better leverage spatial data to improve processes across various projects.

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Mining companies are starting to recognise the advantages of a centralised GIS system, but their organisational structures often prevent this from happening.

“Traditionally, mine sites worked in silos and there was minimal communication between different mine sites,” said Mr Somerville. “This meant there wasn’t a lot of cross-organisational innovation.”

“But we’re now seeing attitudes change. Mining companies are now beginning to recognise the advantages of this and how it can help improve profits. But ultimately, this is quite a big change and it takes a lot of time to do it well.”