Researcher: Shalati Baloyi, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg
Supervisor: Prof. Glen Nwaila, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg
Mining companies are subject to high risk and uncertainty caused by an underestimation or overestimation of mineral resources. Over the years, various techniques have been implemented to estimate mineral resources. This research compared the effectiveness of Ordinary Kriging (OK) and Sequential Gaussian simulations (SGSIM) in the estimation and quantification of uncertainty in mineral resources. Mineral grade data was transformed and used to quantify spatial continuity using variograms. Unsampled locations were estimated using OK and SGSIM was used to quantify uncertainty. The results found suggested that SGSIM is more effective in estimating mineral grade and quantifying its uncertainty compared to OK.
