GEOVIA CEO @MD ​​​​​​​was recently interviewed by the Mining Magazine. Read the thought-provoking piece below! 

French software company Dassault Systèmes has been quietly growing the planning and scheduling portfolio offered by its natural resources and urban planning arm, GEOVIA, into a comprehensive mining operations suite.

Underpinned by a cloud-based modelling and simulation platform called 3DEXPERIENCE, the range of strategic planning and scheduling solutions on offer now covers more of the value chain, from geological stages to specific open-pit and block-caving applications.

Interestingly, the company takes a role-based approach to applications. For instance, future-facing solutions include the Geology Modeler ‘role', which uses localised fault modelling and dynamic anisotropy control features to allow geologists to model increasingly complex geological environments.

The Pit Optimizer's role' aims to offer mining engineers better control of the ultimate footprint of a surface mine to maximise profit and minimise waste, while the Surface Mine Designer role covers safe and practical waste and stockpile storage areas including practical ramp access design and material reporting.

The planning solutions leverage Dassault Systèmes' trailblazing past in the 3D technology it calls "virtual twins" instead of the industry standard term "digital twins". Dassault Systèmes, which has been using the concept in defence and aviation for decades, prefers to use its terminology as it reflects the company's more inter-connected software solutions.

Taken all together, the GEOVIA suite's focus on operationalising environmental objectives through better planning at a project's initial stages is certainly of the moment - and with this in mind, Mining Magazine editor Craig Guthrie discussed the company's plans with its new chief executive, Mauro DelleMonache, who joined in October.

 GEOVIA's technology is well positioned to enable the low-footprint and low-emissions mining industry of the future, but what is your overarching vision for the brand?

The technology inherently enables low footprint and low emissions -this is especially true if you look at what we've been doing for a decade and our pedigree in mine modelling and planning and management scheduling.  Zooming out, if those technologies didn't exist, how efficient could a miner be?

These technologies have inherently provided such benefits; it's not such a leap to look towards the ability to model more deeply and with more characteristics. One of the aspects on which I am focused, is how we can be more precise when extracting an ore body.

There is a fascinating analogy about pinhole surgery on a person, where doctors are achieving the same goal but are less evasive. This can translate to mining - if we know there is an ore body that we want to try to access, can we be less intrusive?

Can we be more precise in how we extract it? Inherently, that brings a sustainable component to it that definitely speaks to land use management. It speaks to not causing disruption. To further that analogy, after pinhole, people recover better; well, the land would recover better. And because the land recovers better, the cost goes down again.

Another aspect, going out a little bit further in time, is using AI and software for complex modelling. If you actually look at a model of a mine, the more precise it can be, the more we can understand how best to use that asset and not make decisions upfront. The challenge is that as you make the models more complex, you need to use AI as a digital means of being able to comprehend it. As an industry, we've not even really scratched the surface on that.

Will virtual twin solutions expand to take in more areas of the value chain in future?

As I mentioned, one of the conversations I've been having with some of our clients is, can we make the virtual twin have more characteristics, and have deeper characteristics, including on ESG? For instance, if a miner knows more about the emissions or sustainability components of a certain asset - how will that impact on their decision-making?

It is not about extracting whatever we want. It is about lessening the impact around that, for mining's social licence, particularly if the models are more robust and deeper in nature.

Another aspect of how virtual twins interact with the value chain is around connectivity. When we start creating a virtual twin, a consumer may ask for one specific need, but the more assets that are virtualized, the more you can connect them across the entire value chain. So we can see how the impact of a change in one asset affects another.

I heard an interesting comment last month about the difference between a digital twin and a virtual twin. The colleague used the analogy of a zombie versus a person. They said, a zombie can't react to stimulus, because it doesn't actually have a brain. Whereas a person, obviously, will behave differently and act differently. That is the difference, I think, between a digital and virtual twin. Now imagine if you can connect those virtual twins together across the value chain. It's not that hard to project the value proposition.

Are there any technical, corporate or environmental challenges that you have faced over the past few years that you want to address in 2023?

I'm based in Australia, but I think this is a global challenge - the skill shortage. I've been in a role that brings technology to industry for almost 30 years, and there has always been this underlying concern around job creation and jobs sustainability.

It's been proven over and over again, every time you introduce technologies, you get efficiencies, but you're forever in this perpetual skills gap, trying to find the people to manage your systems.

I continue to see that playing itself out. It's playing itself out fairly strongly in this region, for sure, but it's really a global phenomenon.

The other challenge is our industry still has more work on diversity. It is great to see and acknowledge the challenges and implement changes, but we still have a long way to go. Land use and land rights are also very hot topics. The visibility has gone up around the challenge and this is where the technology can definitely come in. If we can model better, we can actually understand land use better before we drill that first hole. We can also understand how to become more inclusive for the community that we're impacting. There's definitely more conscious understanding of social licence to operate.

Can you go over the product innovations at GEOVIA over the past few years that could make an impact on the mining industry?

Here it is good to take a step back, GEOVIA is part of Dassault Systèmes, which has been around for more than 40 years and even started in 3D. That's not a new technology anymore. But they have actually evolved to have many different capabilities in many different sectors, outside of the resource sectors.

If I look at some of the things that we're bringing to market or have been brought to market - think of mine operations management, geology modeller; what I see is that we are taking IP that exists in other parts of Dassault Systèmes and knowledge from those industries, and plugging them into our evolution of our technologies.

For instance, we've been heavily involved in avionics, and the building and design of aircraft, including the health and safety components  - we do the same thing in automotive. In biomedical, we do the same with its interesting technologies.

There are all these technologies from industries that are adjacent to the markets we serve. Some of the things I've seen are simulation and optimisation models. If you look at mining, there are some very good parallels to manufacturing in the automotive industry. You could say those industries embraced some technologies sooner. The good news is, a lot of it is tried and tested. So incorporating it into mining can be easier than expected.

Looking to the year ahead, what overall trends will we see in mining, and perhaps drill down into your focus areas and specific trends in there?

One of the trends I see is in electrification. Remote operations are still going to be remote. But I think the ability to generate electrical energy is a lot different than it was even 5-10 years ago.

I see a lot of conversation in mining around energies, specifically, moving away from fossil fuels and towards sustainable energy. All of that and the energy usage can be modelled.

We also see the need to optimise operations quicker. With the price fluctuations happening in the market, how do we get our operations to respond faster? This will drive the requirement for autonomous decision-making.

I don't think we're going to get to that stage where big decisions are being run digitally. But I do think there are lots of smarter processes, that the response time is short, and the need to act is immediate. And you need to consume a lot of information to make an intelligent decision, the only way to do that is, to put some systems in place to allow that to happen.

One of the better examples I've seen is the conveyors if energy cost prices spike, can we actually reduce their speed? But who's monitoring that energy? Price? Can we automate those activities to understand that we're getting the best return? I think that's going to continue. And in a small way, that example, speaks to efficiency. And efficiency to me speaks about being more sustainable, because you're making the best use of the resource at that moment in time.

Source - Mining Magazine, Feb 8, 2023, web

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