The Role of Geophysics in the Security of Critical Minerals

Securing mineral resources is important for a country’s continuous development. As most shallow orebodies have already been mined, deep orebodies are targets for mineral exploration. It is difficult to predict the geometries of deep orebodies using geological and drilling data. Geophysical surveys provide three-dimensional (3D) physical models for the interpretation of deep underground structures. To improve interpretation accuracy, it is necessary to effectively integrate not only geophysical exploration but also various complex geological information. We propose a mineral exploration method based on a digital twin. Various types of complex geological information, including geophysical data, are integrated and built into the digital twin. Based on this, it is possible to enhance the reliability of interpretation and perform accurate simulations of exploration and drilling. With the use of a digital twin, we can expect that a stable integrated analysis can be performed to minimize the uncertainty of each exploration and increase the exploration success rate.