Machine Learning Algorithms and Their Application to Ore Reserve Estimation of Sparse and Imprecise Data

Traditional geostatistical estimation techniques have been used predominantly by the mining industry for ore reserve estimation. Determination of mineral reserve has posed considerable challenge to mining engineers due to the geological complexities of ore body formation. Extensive research over the years has resulted in the development of several state-of-the-art methods for predictive spatial mapping, which could be used for ore reserve estimation; and recent advances in the use of machine learning algorithms (MLA) have provided a new approach for solving the problem of ore reserve estimation. The focus of the present study was on the use of two MLA for estimating ore reserve: namely, neural networks (NN) and support vector machines (SVM). Application of MLA and the various issues involved with using them for reserve estimation have been elaborated with the help of a complex drill-hole dataset that exhibits the typical properties of sparseness and impreciseness that might be associated with a mining dataset. To investigate the accuracy and applicability of MLA for ore reserve estimation, the generalization ability of NN and SVM was compared with the geostatistical ordinary kriging (OK) method.