TORONTO (miningweekly.com) – Amazon Web Services (AWS) has joined TSX-V-listed Integra Gold’s Gold Rush Challenge, which officially opened to competitors on Wednesday.
AWS would provide cloud computing capabilities to the hundreds of participants in the challenge, where entrants would analyse large amounts of mining data to locate the next big gold discovery at Integra’s Sigma/Lamaque properties, in Quebec.
The challenge was an incentive prize contest powered by the popular HeroX crowdsourcing platform. After registering for the competition, competitors from any background or location would be given access to a unique database built from 6 TB and 75 years of historic mining and exploration data from Integra’s formerly producing Sigma/Lamaque mines in Val-d’Or.
For the purposes of this challenge, the size of the 6 TB ‘parent’ database had been consolidated to roughly 25 GB, as a result of intensive data compilation and compression work conducted by a 12-person team from Innov-Explo Consulting during the last three months.
The individual or group whose submission represented the best prospect for the next big gold discovery on the Sigma/Lamaque properties, based on a weighted set of criteria as outlined in the challenge rules, would win their share of C$1-million.
Integra advised that more than 750 competitors from more than 60 countries, from Australia to Zambia, had preregistered for the Gold Rush Challenge. They received access to the data to start their analysis on Wednesday. Registrants from academia, geology, mining, engineering, data science and many other nongeoscientific disciplines had already signed up to analyse 75 years of drill holes, gold assays, underground workings and photos from the Sigma/Lamaque properties.
Interested parties could still register.
The challenge winners would be announced following a charity event for the finalists on Sunday, March 6, 2016, during the Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada conference to be held in Toronto.
AWS would host and facilitate access to the Gold Rush Challenge’s data. Participants would also have free access to software provider Leapfrog’s three-dimensional geological modelling technology, as well as geoscience technical support and challenge submission management from engineering firm WSP, through partnership agreements with Integra.
The Society of Economic Geologists (SEG) was also joining the Gold Rush Challenge as a research partner. The SEG served more than 7 000 members worldwide that were committed to advancing the science and the discovery of mineral resources through research, publications, courses and field trips. The SEG and its network of experts would provide competitors with, among other things, important, free access to its wealth of past research on the Abitibi area geology and, specifically, the Sigma/Lamaque properties.