Undertaking exploration projects is increasingly becoming a challenge owing to a lack of available equity, says Australia-based consulting company Optiro director Mark Warren, noting that this makes it difficult for explorers to add value to their companies.

However, he says there is available information that exploration companies can use to enhance their projects.

“The acquisition of large quantities of exploration data is becoming easier. We live in the age of ‘Big Data’ but the understanding of how to use the data is lacking. Technology, if combined with expertise, can allow maximum value to be extracted from large data sets,” notes Warren.

Generally speaking, there are large amounts of public and privately funded exploration data covering Africa that is released to the public, says Warren.

He adds that this data provides a good foundation for companies that wish to improve their exploration success and make use of limited exploration budgets.

“If you can efficiently explore by using the wealth of available data with a proven scientific approach, you have a winning formula – which leads to success where others fail – at reduced risk.”

Optiro provides services to exploration companies to enable them to use available existing data and combine it with mineral systems knowledge.

“It is a process called predictive modelling, which is underpinned by an advanced geological and mineral systems framework used to generate valid exploration targets.”

Warren says knowledge-driven techniques offer an objective approach to information modelling, using relationships between known mineral occurrences and particular geological, geochemical and geophysical features to assess the likelihood of locating mineralisation.

Data-driven techniques, in contrast, provide a subjective approach to the modelling process, and using mineral systems knowledge provides weighting factors that are combined with the predictive maps to generate an overall prospectivity map, he says.