Geological modelling and resource estimation is where AI assists a geologist’s interpretation rather than replacing it: implicit modelling software that infers lithology, structure and alteration from sparse drill data, and statistical models that predict geotechnical and recovery variables directly into a block model.
This category also covers predicting mineralogy and geometallurgical domains and the underlying statistical domaining work that groups a deposit into zones with distinct behaviour before a mine plan is built on top of it.