Geometric optimization of target drillhole planning for mineral exploration

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This project, in partnership with Objectivity Inc., a small software development company in the field of mining from Sudbury Canada, aims to develop and validate innovative optimization methodologies for the planning of the drilling exploration phase of mineral deposits. The software development team in Sudbury will collaborate with researchers in Polytechnique to develop, validate and integrate new planning algorithms into a graphical software application developed by Objectivity, which will allow geologists to evaluate various exploration scenarios. Specifically, this project first aims to compare a novel planning approach based on tridimensional optimization of drill-hole locations and spatial orientations with more traditional approaches based on two-dimensional planning based on sections. The project also aims to incorporate an uncertainty model of drill-hole trajectories into the formulation of the optimization problem. The third goal of the project is to improve the algorithmic efficiency of the optimization process through the development of specialized data-structures and algorithms, and their parallelization. This project will mobilize three graduate students and one part-time research professional from Polytechnique.