Stochastic optimisation is the ultimate reserve estimator, says Marcelo Godoy, a keynote speaker at AusIMM’s upcoming Mineral Resource Estimation Conference (MREC) 2025 conference in Perth, Western Australia.
The veteran mining engineer with a masters in geostatistics from the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul in Brazil and PhD in strategic mine planning from the University of Queensland in Australia says resource development projects are “complex technical constructs” that take a long time to become operations. Currently AngloGold Ashanti’s chief technology officer, Godoy says stochastic optimisation of conditional simulated models provides more realistic production forecasts and effectively manages resource risks.
“It considers resource confidence derived from equiprobable models of the deposit, which can incorporate sampling errors,” he says. “In addition, it goes further than commonly used evaluation methodologies by using probabilistic parameters to optimise key resource to reserve modifying factors.
“While we cannot control commodity prices, taxes, exchange rates, etc, we can progressively narrow the gap in estimated and actual tonnages and grades, recoveries, costs and productivity.
“That is where the stochastic mine planning is most valuable.”
Godoy will use an example of stochastic mine planning for an openpit gold project to show advantages of stochastic mine planning over standard deterministic mine planning and resource classification in accounting for geological uncertainty and supporting investment decisions.
“Investment in mining projects, like most business ventures, is highly susceptible to risk and uncertainty,” Godoy says.
“Effectively identifying, assessing and managing these risks is crucial for making strategic investments and optimising operational performance. Geological uncertainty is a primary factor contributing to unmet project expectations.
“The use of conditional simulations combined with stochastic mine planning addresses one of the fundamental problems of dealing with resource estimation uncertainty in production planning, which is not addressed by conventional methods.”
For more information on attending MREC 2025, go to https://www.ausimm.com/conferences-and-events/mineral-resource-estimation/attend/why-attend/
