Common standard for assessment data proposed

Lack of standards affects discovery rates

“We believe that discovery rates can increase if the type, quality, quantity and accessibility of geoscience data available to companies and stakeholders is improved,” said Charles Beaudry, chair of the PDAC geoscience committee.

With that in mind, a team of subject matter specialists with expertise in diamond drilling, geology, geochemistry and geophysics assembled by Beaudry has developed the Exploration Assessment Data Digital Format (EADDF) with input from jurisdictions across the country.

The ultimate goal, said Beaudry, is to encourage provinces and territories to adopt the guidelines and ultimately enshrine them in regulations.

The proposed guidelines are largely modeled on a similar exercise that Australia went through 20 years ago.

In the absence of minimal standards for data submission, such as table and field names and how the metadata should be organized, it’s difficult and time consuming for subsequent users of the assessment data to use it to make land acquisition and targeting decisions, noted Beaudry.

And that difficulty is one reason Canada’s share of global non-ferrous exploration budgets has fallen, he added.

“If iron ore exploration budgets are included, Canada has fallen behind Australia for the first time in 15 years and is no longer able to claim to be the top jurisdiction for exploration investment globally.

“The PDAC proposes a simple yet comprehensive solution that requires exploration companies and claim holders to submit their assessment results in a simple text file with a standard structure and the minimum metadata to evaluate the quality of the results. This is not meant to replace the assessment report that is mandated by all provincial and territorial jurisdictions and usually submitted as a pdf formatted document, but to complement the traditional report with results that are easy to submit and easy to compile.”

Currently, requirements that Canadian jurisdictions have for submission of digital data vary widely, said Beaudry.

“Some provinces say they require digital data, but when you really drill down, you find that what they really mean is a pdf, whereas others, for example, Newfoundland, say they want all of a claim holder’s digital data but they don’t say what the file should look like. They don’t say what the headers should be or how it should be structured.

“This is where we come in. We say what the headers should look like, what the field names should be and how they should be structured because that makes it easier at the back end when people compile this stuff. That’s the whole point.”

Beaudry is confident that mining and exploration companies will be onside.

“There’s no reason why companies couldn’t start producing data in this format. The companies that we have spoken with received it fairly positively. They understand the macroeconomic objectives of what we’re trying to do. It’s not a hard sell.”