Mining companies and organizations are increasingly going outside of the industry and using open innovation platforms to find solutions to their challenges.
Building on Goldcorp’s (TSX: G; NYSE: GG) original Goldcorp Challenge in 2000, Integra Gold (TSXV: ICG) has launched the “Gold Rush Challenge,” releasing 6 terabytes of historic mining data from its recently acquired Sigma-Lamaque gold property in Val-d’Or, Que., in an open competition to find new deposits.
And in Australia, the Ore-X Challenge, launched by Gold Fields (NYSE: GFI) and innovation program Unearthed, sought to find out if a computer algorithm could be as good or better than a geologist at ore-grade prediction in a mine.
Such challenges are an interesting way to engage talent from outside of the mining industry, and also serve as a way to stretch scarce company resources.
“The Gold Rush Challenge exponentially expands our reach and access to quality people and ideas through the use of ‘online prospectors,’ all the while allowing our team to remain focused on advancing high-potential deposits, such as the Triangle Zone,” said Integra Gold CEO Stephen de Jong in a release. “We expect cutting-edge, innovative ideas to come not just from people in the mining and exploration industry but from anyone interested in or skilled at analyzing big data.”
Integra Gold is offering a total of $1 million in prize money, with first prize consisting of $500,000. As of September, more than 750 people from more than 60 countries had registered for the challenge.
Participants have until Dec. 1 to submit an exploration plan, with a panel of judges determining and announcing the winners at the Prospectors & Developers Association of Canada convention in March.
In the Unearthed online challenge, participants created ore-grade prediction algorithms that could classify material in a gold mine. Unearthed reports that the algorithms produced were as accurate as geologists at classifying the data provided and were much faster.
Over 100 entries were submitted from 275 competitors in over 20 countries competing for a first prize of $10,000 to licence a prototype to Gold Fields.
Unearthed holds hackathons around Australia, bringing together software developers, designers and industry insiders to develop prototype solutions to industry problems over a three-day period.
The Unearthed program has already produced 70 prototype solutions to various industry problems.
— This article originally appeared in the November 2015 issue of Mining Trends & Developments.
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