Print Email Facebook Twitter Mining the ocean floor: Managing geological uncertainty Title Mining the ocean floor: Managing geological uncertainty Author Wambeke, T. Alvarez Grima, M. Fenton, G.A. Benndorf, J. Vervoort, A. Faculty Civil Engineering and Geosciences Department Geoscience & Engineering Date 2013-08-11 Abstract As land resources decrease, commodity prices increase, and technology evolves, deep sea mining is becoming a viable alternative to meet the increasing demand for minerals. Successful deep sea mining operations are built on sound identification of the resource, proper selection of equipment, a thoughtful production plan, and good project management. These four key activities can be further optimized by analyzing how the spatial variability and uncertainty of the ore body properties impact the final mining operation. To address this problem, IHC Merwede is in the process of developing a risk quantification framework in the context of deep sea mining, which makes use of state of the art geostatistical simulation methods and transfer functions to quantify geological uncertainty and translate it into decision or project risk. The paper introduces the Local Average Subdivision method (LAS) for generating simulated models of the deposit and presents a new extension to incorporate point measurements of geotechnical or ore grade properties. Due to its computational efficiency, the presented method is suitable for simulating largely extended sea floor deposits. The second part of the paper illustrates, through example case studies, the significant benefits of a risk based approach which translates geological uncertainty into financial or operational performance indicators. In particular, the focus is on assessing financial project risk and on the design optimization of the deep sea excavation equipment by analyzing cutting forces, specific energies, and power requirements. Subject geostatistical simulationslocal average subdivisionspatial variabilitygeological uncertainty To reference this document use: http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:a0e78db3-cbf7-4887-9b7d-4b87b3e58cb1 Source 23rd World Mining Congress and Expo WMC, Montreal, Canada, 11-15 August 2013 Part of collection Institutional Repository Document type conference paper Rights (c) 2013 The Author(s) Files PDF 295436.pdf 564.74 KB Close viewer /islandora/object/uuid:a0e78db3-cbf7-4887-9b7d-4b87b3e58cb1/datastream/OBJ/view