Identifying economic fairways: Mapping mineral and financial prosperity for the resources industry

Join the Melbourne Branch for their May tech talk: Identifying economic fairways: Mapping mineral and financial prosperity for the resources industry.

About this event

Traditional models of resource development often delay explicit assessments of economic potential until late in the project lifecycle. However, this can result in sub-optimal allocation of resources in pursuit of geologically favourable, but economically disadvantageous projects. An alternative strategy introduces economic considerations alongside geological evaluations in the early stages of resource development. These "Economic Fairways" assessments identify regions more suited to resource development due to their proximity to key infrastructure and transportation routes, and local fiscal considerations.

This presentation by Associate Professor Stuart Walsh, will discuss a set of geospatial tools created by Monash University and Geoscience Australia to conduct Economic Fairways assessments across Australia for a variety of different mineral systems. It will cover how these new assessments can be integrated into more traditional tools for assessing mineral potential, and some of the ways that we have extended the economic fairways approach into other industries. Associate Professor Walsh will conclude by sharing some of the current work on Economic Fairways analysis for the mining industry and a vision for the future of this work.

Program
5.00pm - 6.00pm: Arrival and pre-event networking
6.00pm - 7.00pm: Technical talk presentation
7.00pm - 8.00pm: Post event networking

Speaker/s

Stuart Walsh

AAusIMM

Associate Professor (Resources Engineering) Monash University

Read more Hide

Dr. Stuart Walsh holds a Ph.D. in Applied Mathematics from the University of Melbourne. Following his Ph.D., he worked in postdoctoral and research positions in the United States at the University of Minnesota, Cornell University, and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. He returned to Australia in 2015 and started a research consultancy/software development company, before taking a position at the University of New South Wales. In 2018, Dr. Walsh returned to Melbourne, joining the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Monash, where he is an Associate Professor in Resources Engineering.

Dr. Walsh is the lead developer for Bluecap, created in collaboration with Geoscience Australia. The Bluecap software provides the analysis for both the “Hydrogen Economic Fairways Tool (HEFT)” and the “Economic Fairways Mapper”, which inform new resource development through Geoscience Australia's online portal. This work was recognised with the inaugural Eureka Prize for Innovative Research in Sustainability in 2023.