THE AUSTRALIAN MINERAL OCCURRENCE DATA EXCHANGE MODEL

Introduction

The Australian Mineral Occurrence Data Exchange Model has been collaboratively developed under the leadership of the Australian Government Geoscience Information Policy Advisory Committee (GGIPAC). Representatives from all Australian Federal, State and Territory Geological Surveys contributed to the model.

Australian mineral occurrences information is stored in individual State and Territory Geological Survey databases. The individual organisations store and maintain information about mineral occurrences, such as commodities, historical production, endowment, reserves, resources, mineral deposit classification. Each agency's database has its own format, attributes and vocabularies, and each was developed using a variety of software platforms and versions of the software to meet the organisations individual business requirements.

Geoscience Australia developed a central database that provided a national overview of mineral occurrences, which was made accessible through the Australian Geoscience portal (http://www.geoscience.gov.au/geoportal/minocc/). To create this web page, data from the States and Territories is currently sent to Geoscience Australia and then manually massaged and uploaded to the central database. As this database is not dynamically linked to the state databases, there are often inconsistencies between data at the Federal and the State and Territory level for the same deposit/occurrence depending on how long it has been since an upload was completed.

Drivers for development of a Mineral Occurrence data model

Web services offer an ideal, cost efficient technology for removing both the inconsistencies and the need for data to be regularly uploaded to the National database. Web services also offered a chance to access the latest and most up to date data from the originating agency and return the data in a consistent format. However, any such web service requires an agreed data exchange standard and none existed.

The Mineral Occurrence Data exchange model

The model is a high level data exchange model for mineral occurrences represented in UML that can be extended to cover all Earth Resources. It will enable data on Mineral Localities to be delivered live to the Australian Geoscience Portal and will also facilitate data transfer between government, industry and other organisations. It will enable real time access to the latest data from each Survey. Because it is a standard data model, it will also enable a more formal structure for reporting resources and reserves that can comply with national and internationally accepted reporting codes. The model will require that standard vocabularies be compiled for each attribute and this is work in progress.

The model is compatible with GeoSciML, the International Union of Geological Sciences (IUGS) developed language for exchange of geological map features, and uses patterns and features common to GeoSciML. These patterns are based on ISO and Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) standards using Geographic Mark-up Language (GML) as an eXtensible Markup Language (XML) encoding for geographic information. In the ISO model “features”, or real-world objects of interest, are classified into types on the basis of a characteristic set of properties. GML provides few concrete feature types directly, as these are intended to be created using the standard components in a domain-specific "GML Application Schema". The Mineral Occurrences is an example of a domain-specific schema. Model development took place in the graphical UML environment.

FIGURE 1. A UML diagram of the Mineral Occurrence Data Exchange Model

Summary of the key points of the Australian Mineral Occurrence Model Summary of the key points of the Australian Mineral Occurrence Model

·	The model describes Earth Resources independent of associated human activities (i.e. mining)
·	Caters for description of Earth Resource using:
	→ Mineral Deposit Models that describe the actual deposit type (encompassing the Cox & Singer classification)
	→ Mineral Systems that describe the processes associated with deposit formation
	→ Supergene processes
·	Utilises GeoSciML Mapped Feature to describe spatial representation
·	Utilises GeoSciML Earth Material to describe host and associated materials
·	The model describes a mine as made up of a number of Mining Activities, each of which produce some commodity
·	The model provides the ability to describe commodity resources formally or informally, utilising CRIRSCO (Committee for Mineral Reserves International Reporting Standards) and including basic JORC requirements (the 2004 Australasian code for reporting exploration results, mineral resources and ore reserves).

Participating in further developments of the model

The Model can be accessed on https://www.seegrid.csiro.au/twiki/bin/view/Xmml/MineralOccurences.

Any interested parties are welcome to comment and perhaps participate in trying to extend and progress the model to becoming an International data exchange standard.

Additional co-authors to this paper are:

Alistair Ritchie, GeoScience Victoria, Victorian Department of Primary Industries

Jafar Taheri, Mineral Resources Tasmania, Department of Infrastructure, Energy and Resources

Ian Withnall, Geological Survey of Queensland, Queensland Department of Mines and Energy

Andrew Wygralak, Northern Territory Geological Survey, NT Department of Primary Industries