Development of HUMGEOSTAT: A New Geological Tool for Geostatistical Analysis of Mineral Deposit: A Case Study at Sin Quyen Mine (Northern Vietnam)

This paper presents the results of the design and implementation of a new geological tool, named as HUMGEOSTAT, for advanced geostatistical analysis of mineral deposit, a case study at the Sin Quyen, one of the important mines for the Vietnam mining industry in Vietnam. The tool is developed based on the Stanford Geostatistical Modeling Software (SgeMS) platform, which is an open-source computer package for solving problems involving spatially related variables. The tool is capable of supporting users in reducing uncertainty and improving the quality of mining exploration tasks. The tool has all the functions needed to solve a complete geostatistical issues i.e. Variogram models (such as Spherical, Exponential, Gausian, Linear and Pure nugget effect); and four commonly used Kriging methods (Ordinary Kriging, Simple Kriging, Indicator Kriging, Co-Kriging). The tool was applied to test various types of input data and particularly for complex copper ore bodies of Sin Quyen mine. The results of analysis of orebody spatial structure has found that Cu content has non-uniform change, regional anisotropy in north-south (0±22.5 0 ) direction, and anisotropic index is around 1.3. The mineral reserves are estimated according to sub-blocks and points in the orebody-space. The results indicate that the Ordinary Kriging (OK) has reliable results, variance estimation is small; the predicted result gained from OK have strong correlation (K=0.905) with ore samples. HUMGEOSTAT was applied at the Sin Quyen mine and various coal mines, the results were adapted with reality of mines.