Australian state turns to crowdsourcing to uncover mineral riches (Reuters U.S. – February 25, 2020)

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MELBOURNE, Feb 25 (Reuters) – South Australia is putting A$250,000 ($166,000) up for grabs in a crowdsourcing competition to uncover more mineral reserves, as the industry taps expertise from a wide array of disciplines to find new large mineral lodes.

The five-month challenge will make available the state’s historic data sets for a region home to BHP Group’s huge Olympic Dam copper mine, the government of the Australian state said in a statement. The competition will kick off on March 2 and run until July 31, it added.

“The competition offers the chance to combine geological expertise with new mathematical, machine learning and artificial intelligence to accelerate mineral discovery in the mineral-rich Gawler Craton,” said Justin Strharsky of program facilitators Unearthed.

Australia’s minerals mapping sets are among the world’s most advanced. Combined with computing developments they have brought a renaissance in exploration in what was considered a mature region with major deposits already all found.

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