The GIM Channel 09: Future trends in GIM

Steve Mundell, acQuire’s Director of Product, gives insights into the technology trends catching his attention right now.

He discusses why he thinks geoscientific information management is fundamental to enabling greater innovation, connectivity and information flow between mining systems. Listen to this week’s episode to hear what Steve has to say about his vision for GIM and the mine of the future.

If you’ve liked what you’ve heard, catch Steve at acQuire’s booth 823 at PDAC this week, 5 – 8 March, where he presents “The Connected Mine” and “GIM Suite 3 and the future” on Tuesday 7 March.

Show Notes

Here are some key take-outs:

Challenges in GIM:

• Moving companies from in-house systems to more robust, commercial solutions for data management was one of the first challenges in GIM Steve faced early in his career.
• Some of the biggest challenges for the resources industry still revolve around people, process and technology.
• The knowledge contained within people in the resources industry is so crucial. As we move toward more complex environments to work in, the knowledge held by people is going to become more and more important. Losing IP and key staff during downturns is a real problem the industry is facing.

“We love to talk about people, process and technology” – Steve

• Looking at the industry from a process perspective, it is starting to move towards a true cross functional integration. However key problems still include silos and being able to uproot past processes built up over many years.
• In terms of technology, the big picture needs to be seen to change innovation.
• There may be lots of “bright, shiny things” out there but the full stack of technology needs to be viewed as a whole system.

“One of the trends catching my attention is methods to try and extract new or useful data products from existing sources.”

• There are large amounts of data available in the industry, yet how can we extract more from this data into more useable products to help us make decisions?
• For example, core images. Everyone in the industry uses them but how can companies use these images and the information they contain to benefit them better?

“GIM is important is because it is an enabler for downstream value creating. It is the key part connecting all these disparate data sources.”

• For anyone questioning why geoscientific data so important, Steve tells how crucial it is to bring people, process and technology together through a source of information that can be relied on.
• This will stop the industry building innovation on a guess.

Here are the links you might need

Have you heard the one about…

Zane Prickett, Director of Unearthed, discusses how start-ups and hackathons can foster greater innovation in the natural resources sector. Listen here >

Matt Hoffer from Coeur Mining discusses innovative trends and the challenges geologists face in the natural resources industry. Listen here >

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