IDENTIFIYING, RECORDING AND PRESERVING CULTURALLY SIGNIFICANT SITES USING YOUR TABLET: THE DISRUPTION OF FIELD BASED GEOLOGICAL DATA COLLECTION

The identification, recording and preserving of culturally significant sites is increasingly relevant to the establishment of new mining projects. Australian mining companies are ensuring they comply with heritage/flora/fauna conservation/preservation requirements when undertaking exploration activities through the use of tablet computers and application of exclusion zone geofences around sensitive areas within a mapping app.

This presentation reviews how this is being achieved and the range of use cases of gofences of this nature. One particularly novel approach has custodians of cultural heritage remotely monitoring breaches of exclusion zones, that are not even visible on the map for geologists and exploration compamy workers. As they do not wish to unneccesarily promote awareness of their most sacred sites, these are not communicated to 3rd parties until they are alerted to activity within the proximity of these sites.

This new way of managing exploration activity around cultural sites holds promise in helping to manage the broader concern over exploration near sensitive areas and enable economic benefits alongside the preservation of cultural heritage.