acQuire sits at the forefront of developing geological and environmental data management technology for the Australian mining industry.
The Australian resources sector exists in a complexity-rich environment, with the need for accessible, timely and trustworthy data that is essential for decision-makers at all levels.
Operating within increasingly rigorous compliance regimes, mining companies across Australia and around the world have come to rely upon acQuire’s sophisticated data management tools.
Accessible, timely and trustworthy geoscientific and environmental information is critical as miners strive to achieve positive environmental, social and governance (ESG) outcomes and sustainability goals.
“Data has to be used to be useful, and it can only be used if it is easily located, easily understood, and if it can be trusted. Unless those things are in place, then the data is worthless,” acQuire’s director of product Steve Mundell told Australian Mining.
“If important geological or environmental data has been collected yet is squirrelled away in difficult-to-locate storage drives or spreadsheets and hasn’t been verified or validated, nor successfully incorporated into larger data sets, then it’s of little use.”
One of key data management products that acQuire has developed for the mining industry is GIM Suite. This sophisticated platform provides a standardised architecture and single source of truth for the many forms of geological data – observations and measurements – captured through the process of mineral exploration or mining operations.
“GIM Suite is a premier solution and is primarily focused on the management of geological data, including original observations and measurements, which underpins every model, every estimation and every investment that mining companies or third parties make in a project,” Mundell said.
The information derived from smart mining techniques, processes and practices forms part of a wider ecosystem that, when properly integrated, can inform optimisations across the entire value-chain.
“Every deposit that is reported forms a geological picture, and that crucial data informs a model which defines the value of the resource and GIM Suite ensures that the data can be trusted,” Mundell said.
“GIM Suite ensures critical geological data is managed effectively, and for mining organisations required to operate within strict governance frameworks, the platform provides the ability to clearly demonstrate compliance as any stored data is auditable, a key attribute for governance.”
The ability to apply validation rules from the point of capture ensures no corrupt or incorrect data gets stored, regardless of from where it has been sourced and by whom.
“From past experiences of encountering corrupt data, either captured incorrectly, managed incorrectly, partially lost and spread out over multiple mobile devices, it was clear that a fully integrated geological data management platform could solve many data management issues,” Mundell said.
GIM Suite can be scaled without custom-coded development, regardless a mining operation’s size, and ensures data quality is not compromised.
The other key data management product acQuire developed for the mining industry is EnviroSys.
“EnviroSys is an environmental data management system – built with a quality and compliance-focused architecture – for organisations to effectively manage their environmental obligations,” Mundell said.
“In real-world mine settings, any tenement, any lease, any operation will have an environmental license attached to it with strict obligations that the mining company will have to meet across multiple regulatory levels.
“So in order to understand if a company is meeting its environmental obligations – in essence, is complaint – the ability to effectively capture, validate, monitor, analyse and report any type of environmentally-related data is critical.
“EnviroSys can be tailored to allow mining companies to manage an assortment of different data monitoring fields, including air quality, ground, surface and potable water, meteorological conditions, noise, waste, emissions, soil, land disturbance and rehabilitation activities.”
In a mining context, EnviroSys has the capacity to provide automated two-way data flows to sites such as laboratories and across other Internet of Things (IoT) devices and sensors, business intelligence units and corporate reporting systems, as well as many other third-party applications.
EnviroSys can also integrate with other internally hosted cloud-based systems and processes upon which a mining operation relies.
Today, acQuire has five international offices with support centres operating in each major time zone.
“As a Perth-based organisation with a global footprint, we are proud to partner with mining operators, regardless of their size and location, to assist them manage their mine and environmental data assets,” Mundell said.
This feature appeared in the June 2023 issue of Australian Mining.