Data tools in development: SNOLAB, CEMI support data analytics for mining, exploration.

AuthorMyers, Ella
PositionMINING - Centre for Excellence in Mining Innovation - Northern Ontario Heritage Fund corporation

Sudbury's SNOLAB will gain some new tenants in the coming weeks, but they're not the usual physicists.

They will be analyzing something as elusive but essential as SNOLAB's neutrinos--data.

The data analysts will be using the newly announced Mining Observatory Data Control Centre (MODCC) in SNOLAB's aboveground facilities, a few hundred metres from the Creighton Mine access shaft in Sudbury.

The MODCC is a four-year, $2.4-million project that resulted from a partnership between the Centre for Excellence in Mining Innovation (CEMI), SNOLAB, the Canada Mining Innovation Council (CMIC), and the Northern Ontario Heritage Fund Corporation (NOHFC).

SNOLAB focuses on subatomic physics, but the new centre will be used to develop data tools for the mining and exploration industries. CEMI's vice-president, Damien Duff, said the collaboration will benefit both organizations.

"They (SNOLAB) want to diversify their science base, and be working more with people else; where within the scientific community," said Duff. "On the one hand, they can learn from those people and how those people can help them, but also how they, as physicists, can bring their knowledge to bear on the mining industry."

"The collaborative effort, including SNOLAB and the synergies presented, are critical."

CEMI announced the global request for proposals in February, with a deadline of March 31. Data analytics business startups and small-to-medium enterprises (SMEs) are invited to apply to use the space for a period of two years.

"MODCC is designed to be an incubation space where people who have ideas can turn all these data into valuable decision-making tools," said Duff. "It's a place where those people will be invited to come and test whether their idea really works."

The space can likely accommodate two projects, but Duff...

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