Digital technologies in mining: import substitution and technological independence

Abstract

Formation of the Russian mining software market was lagging behind the global market due to the collapse of the USSR and changing the economy's development vector from technological to raw materials. Such reorientation has led to a significant reduction in financing the development of Russian mining software, which during many years was significantly promoted by the perception of a considerable number of specialists that the domestic developers were not able to reach the world level for many years. The result of these processes, which have been developing for the last 30 years, is the current state of the Russian mining software market, which is dominated by foreign products. The state of the market is perfectly reflected by mining and geological information systems, which act as backbone systems in the formation of digital technology for engineering support of mining operations. The share of imported mining and geological information systems in the Russian market is 90-95%, which in conditions of the sanctions leads to slowing down the digital transformation of the mining industry. It is possible to change this situation by uniting the efforts of domestic software developers based on creating a network structure in the form of a digital platform that provides third-party software developers a possibility to integrate their tools through a library of API-functions into a single digital environment that realizes a basic set of system and working tools. It is proposed to create this digital platform on the basis of the Russian MINEFRAME mining and geological information system, which has extensive functionality based on 3D modeling and multi-user work within a local area network.