Exhibitors at the 2018 Investing in African Mining Indaba ranged from OEMs to junior mining
companies.
Sustainability
Another topic that was prevalent throughout
Mining Indaba 2018 is that of sustainability
in all its many forms. Bridging the gap
16 _ QUARRY SA | MARCH/APRIL 2018
Gift of the Givers was also present at the
event, raising awareness of Cape Town’s
water crisis and encouraging delegates to
donate to help address the situation.
between technology and sustainability was
Deloitte’s Jan-Adriaan du Plessis, associate
director for strategy and operations – energy
and resources. Du Plessis gave a presentation
on sustainable intelligent mining, which he
defined as addressing four main issues: the
way decisions are made; the skills that will
be required in future; how resources are
managed; and how value is shared.
What does this mean? He explained that
digital platforms allow for more descriptive
real-time information to be used for decision
making. Digitisation and technology will
also change the way the mine of the future
works, requiring mining organisations to
so that we can test things in the digital world
before we apply them in the real world.”
In summary, Hamilton stated that it is likely
there will be some dramatic technological
changes by the year 2050. “From an industry
standpoint we really need to start innovating
with digitalisation and IoT. All of the majors
are talking about this, but just by listening
to Mining Indaba this week, it is a recurring
theme overall.”
Jeff Hamilton, director of brand strategy
and alliances at Dassault Systèmes, spoke
about how the Internet of Things (IoT) will
shape the mine of the future. He gave a
brief overview of the areas that he believes
will see great change by 2050, including
increasing human population, changes
in social structure (the rise of the sharing
economy), human enhancement (in terms
of both cognition and prosthetics), natural
resource consumption (an increase in
population levels will drive a decrease in per
capita consumption and reuse of resources),
natural resource extraction techniques,
urbanisation, energy, robotics, artificial
intelligence, changing labour and skills
requirements, an increase in connected
devices and platform considerations
stemming from this increase.
According to Hamilton, there will likely
be between 35 and 50 billion IoT devices by
2050, which will have a significant impact on
the way society – and industry – functions.
But while big data is a recurring idea that
comes up everywhere these days, he was
quick to stress that this is a tool, not an
end game. “It’s not really about big data, it’s
about actionable intelligence, which relates
to whatever KPIs you're looking at for your
organisation. Our view is that the mining
IoT is digitally connected, it’s data driven,
it’s model based, and ultimately, we get to
probably the most important element here:
we combine the virtual and the real. So what
we can do with this … [IoT] ecosystem in
2050 is we can make a digital twin of the
mine, and then model, simulate and optimise
Mining
MINING INDABA 2018
Jonathan Veeran, partner and deputy head
of law firm Webber Wentzel’s mining sector
group on mineral resources.
SRK Consulting (SA) chairman William
Joughin presented a range of technological
innovations developed and applied by SRK in
its mining project work.