The overall objectives of the GeoNickel project were to enhance geological and geophysical knowledge on nickel ore deposits, and to develop novel, integrated exploration methods and tools for the European base metals industry. The developed technologies aim at enhancing the success potential in the exploration of sulphide and laterite nickel ore deposits. The research and development work concentrated on three main areas:
- modelling of nickel ore deposits in intrusive, komatiitic/picritic and lateritic environments,
- development of geophysical prototype instrumentation and software, and
- development of Geoscientific Information System (GEOSIS) including database and GIS functionality, integrated with an expert system for nickel exploration, and with software packages for advanced statistical methods and ANN based pattern classification/image processing techniques. GeoNickel started in the beginning of 1996 and was completed at the end of 1998. Final tests on the developed geological mod-els, instrumentation and software were encouraging, and the overall objectives of the project were achieved. Most of the developed instruments and software can be applied to a great vari-ety of base metals deposits other than the "nickel family" (Ni, Co, Cu and PGE) and used to aid the exploration of ore deposits genetically related to magmatic or sedimentary rocks in various geotectonic environments.