Computer Forum MICROCHIPS AND MINERALS

Mining in Canada is changing. And fast. For years “mining,” to the average Canadian, conjured up images of grizzled prospectors pounding on rocks somewhere in the vast north, searching for a mineral deposit — one that might some day make the prospector and the country richer. For the past 55 years, Canadians have been able to meet many such individuals at a prospectors and developers convention held in Toronto’s Royal York Hotel. They gather there for four days every spring to rub shoulders with executives from major companies, swap ideas about geology, cut a deal on a claim or two and pull the legs of their colleagues with stories of the north woods. But now another kind of “mining man” is starting to emerge on the Canadian scene. He (and increasingly she) is very often a young, professional computer hacker looking not for a better deposit but for better technology. They are typically employed by universities, governments and mining companies in such esoteric fields as remote sensing, underground communication, automation, expert systems, and robotics.

Coincidentally, these new-style mining men will hold their first official gathering, in Quebec City, during the same week the prospectors meet for the 56th time in Toronto this March. This first Canadian Conference on Computer Applications in the Mineral Industry is being organized by scientists from Laval University, The Canada Centre for Mineral and Energy Technology (canmet), Queen’s University, The Technical University of Nova Scotia, McGill University, Laurentian University, The University of British Columbia, Ecole Polytechnique, The University of Alberta and the Canadian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy. The meeting is the envy of the mining world.

Just as Canadians pioneered the institutionalization of technology transfer, so too are they leading the way in the use of computers in the mining industry through conferences such as this. The Northern Miner Magazine is proud to participate in this conference by providing exclusive coverage for our readers.

In the following pages, we offer a sampling of the conference topics gleaned from nearly 80 individual presentations by authors from such diverse fields as exploration and mineral processing. — Patrick Whiteway (Technical Editor)