New Exploration Technologies

Project Information

NEXT

Grant agreement ID: 776804

DOI 10.3030/776804

Project closed

EC signature date 20 April 2018

Start date 1 May 2018

End date 30 September 2021

Funded under

• SOCIETAL CHALLENGES - Climate action, Environment, Resource Efficiency and Raw Materials

Total cost € 6 901 276,25

EU contribution € 6 901 276,25

Coordinated by

GEOLOGIAN TUTKIMUSKESKUS
Finland

Periodic Reporting for period 2 - NEXT (New Exploration Technologies)

Reporting period: 2019-11-01 to 2021-09-30

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

The main objectives of NEXT are to develop innovative and sensitive exploration concepts and technologies, and to investigate and promote their acceptance by the society. This will be achieved by taking into account the following challenges for the EU economy and civil society:
- Economy related: Exploration at lowest possible costs and identification of new exploration targets
- Technology related: New and more sensitive exploration technologies and solutions
- Environment related: Reduction of the exploration footprint
- Society related: Improving awareness and trust of society to a sustainable raw materials exploration, ultimately targeting the safeguarding of existing employment and creating further new employment opportunities
- Policy related: Recommendations to feed the Raw Materials Strategic Implementation Plan.

Conclusions of the action
NEXT identified twenty-nine (29) exploitable results which are associated with various aspects related to mineral exploration, especially for the early phases, and can be attributed to a number of different categories and topics, such as:
• Geophysical technologies. Hard- and software developments and results verification
• Geochemistry, Mineralogy, and Mineral systems studies, methods, hard- and software development and verification
• Data fusion, processing and interpretation methods, software development and demonstration
• Education. Creating teaching and learning materials
• Clustering, Dissemination & Presentation
• Studies on social acceptance, and recommendations for improving company – community relations at the exploration stage
A key aspect that has been acknowledged also from the Advisory Board of NEXT is that the new technologies contribute to accelerating time to discovery of ore deposits. A key finding from the investigations on the cost savings is that while total exploration budgets follow market trends, the NEXT developments help to increase the exploration productivity – and consequently, this can reduce the number of drillings, which is the by far most expansive method in the exploration for an ore deposit. Further, reducing the number of drillholes, as well as the developed remote technologies (like the UAV geophysical surveys, the geochemical/mineralogical field measurement methods, and environmental remote sensing approach) and the methods to utilize existing and newly generated data (via machine learning/self-organizing maps (SOM)) address environmental concerns and can reduce environmental footprint, and may additionally improve the perception of exploration in Europe. This is also addressed by the research on the social license to explore concept, and practical advice is given to exploration companies with the published toolkit.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

In WP2 (Mineral Systems) the project team compiled geological and metallogenic data from the various target areas within the Iberian Pyrite Belt and in Galicia test areas in Spain, in the Kiruna ore field in Sweden and in the Rajapalot test area in Finland. The studies have been able to outline a preliminary mineral system models with recognition of critical mappable elements.

In WP3 (Technology) several levels of prototypes for the new electromagnetic (EM) system were built by Radai and tested in test sites. The third and the last generation of the Radai Vector Magnetic Surveys system (RVM) was developed in the project. RVM system achieved TRL 7-8 exceeding the targeted TRL 4-5. Project tested environmentally friendly extraction techniques on four sampling sites from Finland, France, Germany and Spain with high mineral potential. Furthermore, the teams tested and validated various field sensors within the test sites. Project produced a satellite imagery downloader “Satellite Image Crawler – SIC”. Independent experts of the Innovation Radar ranked the Novel electromagnetic (EM) survey system on UAV for mineral exploration, as a top innovation product developed in the NEXT project with a high market potential in the near future.

In WP4 (Data Fusion) team reached the four main milestones: “Benchmark hyperspectral field & laboratory data against X-ray diffraction (XRD) and electron probe microanalysis (EPMA) data”, “Upgraded version of EM modelling and inversion software; and vector magnetic field inversion software” , “Data integration workflows for different deposits types ready for application with the data from the test sites” and “Mineral prospectivity maps for target areas ready for publication” . One remarkable achievement of is the SOM (Self-Organizing Maps) Software Tools. A new open-source software tool, GisSOM, for geoscientific data integration in combination with artificial neural works and self-organizing maps is available in GitHub. https://github.com/gtkfi/GisSOM/releases

In WP5 (Social License to Explore), three case studies in different contextual settings in Sweden and Finland were explored. Interviews with local organized actors and surveys among the residents were conducted to investigate which factors shape a local communities’ attitudes towards mineral exploration. The outcomes of the research on the SLE thematic as well as write-ups on the new tools and improved insights on the way ore deposits are formed have been collected in the NEXT Practical Toolkit addressed to Mineral Exploration and Mining Companies.

WP6 (Clustering) team developed a new open-access module "Projects Map" on the Cordis portal. This was achieved through the active cooperation of the Community Research and Development Information Service (CORDIS) team, based in Luxembourg and the University of Lorraine in France. The new module (https://cordis.europa.eu/datalab/p2co.php?lv=en ) allows to explore synergies in a highly efficient manner and provides valuable not only to the domain of mineral exploration and mining, since the search function permits to look for potential synergies on any topic of scientific research the “jungle” of EU funded research projects.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

Some of the main results include e.g.:
- Drone based vector magnetic field survey system providing more information for 3D magnetic inversion which has also been developed and tested in this project.
- Novel drone based electromagnetic (EM) survey system. Presently, such systems are not available in the market. Drones provide a cost-effective and versatile way to conduct EM surveys over dense forests, hills, swamps and rugged terrain, for example. Fast surveying allows almost real-time analysis of measured data and gives option to modify survey plans according to the reality of mineral potential.
- Field electrochemical probe. This probe is an innovative and cost effective tool for onsite field measurement to detect e.g. Zinc, Lead, Cobalt from soil sampling points. Existing methods for detecting these chemical elements are slow and requires expensive laboratory analysis. With this probe, field persons are able to get fast analysis of the soil sampling elements. Using versatile electrochemical probe it's possible to conduct field surveys faster and focus measurement in most potential mineralisation.
- GisSOM software and plugins for Advangeo and ArcGIS which can eventually become commercial software products. These tools will also be used during the last part of the project as a tool for mineral prospectivity mapping.
- NEXT Practical Toolkit addressed to Mineral Exploration and Mining Companies.
- a new open-access module "Projects Map" on the Cordis portal

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