Trusted data sharing for mineral exploration and mining tenements

In mineral exploration, the exploration-discovery-mining (EDM) cycle may take 10–13 years. New and innovative approaches that can shorten the EDM cycle are fundamental to boosting the supply of mineral resources in the global market. In this paper, we propose a methodology for accelerating the EDM cycle by enabling confidentiality-preserving minerals data sharing, potentially shortening the exploration and discovery parts of the cycle. However, it is a highly challenging problem due to the need to balance diverse aspects related to the loss of confidential information and protecting competitive advantage. We investigate how data confidentiality risk assessment and data obfuscation technologies can be brought together to enable the sharing of otherwise sensitive data. We have defined several metrics to quantify the data confidentiality loss and utility gain in sharing data and developed various methods to obfuscate data by suppressing or sampling values. The confidentiality loss and utility loss caused by different obfuscation methods have been studied and empirically validated using a real-life mineral dataset provided by an Australian minerals company. Our proposed methods will enable mining and exploration companies to make informed decisions on what and how much information could be shared to achieve mutual benefits in mineral exploration at an acceptable cost of data confidentiality loss.