HISTORY OF THE WORKING GROUPS:
DATA ACCESS AND USAGE
The data access and usage working group was formed around the original Mobile Equipment Open Data guideline. It was GMG’s first working group. The objective of that group was to oversee projects that enable the unfettered access to data across the mine cycle, improving the capacity to use that data effectively and efficiently. Projects and publications listed below. The group’s projects covered data access issues (mobile equipment open data), data exchange challenges (OMF), and common definitions and KPIs (Time Classification Framework).
INTEROPERABILITY
The Interoperability Working Group focused on driving collaboration within the industry to tackle the most common challenges and develop a common vision for interoperability. To date, the group primarily took a “mile wide, inch deep” approach and focused on industry alignment. The group has developed a live interoperability landscape to provide and overview of existing initiatives.
WHY ARE THE WORKING GROUPS MERGING?
The decision to merge the Data Access and Usage and Interoperability Working Groups was because they shared much of the same community and their topics overlapped in many ways. The new group can still have separate focus areas or sub-committees to deal with different types of topics. The name of the new working group is TBD.
WHY ARE THESE TOPICS IMPORTANT FOR THE MINING INDUSTRY?
As new technologies and systems are adopted in the mining industry, they produce a wider range of data at more granular levels. The insights derived from these new data sources could be used for critical decision-making, reducing costs, optimizing processes, forecasting, trend analysis and more.
However, making use of this data is complicated and challenging, as it involves searching, defining, labelling, cleaning, collecting, filtering and modelling large data sets to identify valuable insights. Data access challenges such data ownership and intellectual property concerns and issues with data interoperability further complicate the process.
Interoperability is the ability of two or more systems, components or processes to exchange information so that they can act on this information to achieve business and operational outcomes. Advanced digital technologies are enhancing—and in many cases revolutionizing—equipment, processes, planning and execution in order to enable more productive, safe and cost-effective mines.
Interoperability is seen by many as an area of increasing importance as mining companies pursue digital transformation initiatives. It has the potential to improve communication, enhance operational excellence, and improve the development and deployment of integrated mining systems and advanced technologies. However, interoperability is a broad and complex and multifaceted subject that affects all areas of operation with no single solution.
ACTIVE PROJECTS
Data Exchange for Mine Software (OMF)
With the goal of improving 3D Data interoperability, this project group has developed the Open Mining Format (OMF), an open-source file specification to support data interchange across the entire mining community. Learn more here.
Mobile Equipment Open Data
A consensus-based guideline that identifies the onboard datasets that should be openly available to equipment owners in a real-time, read-only format. Learn more here.
Interoperability Definitions and Roadmap
Based on the input of +120 companies, this project has produced a report that defines interoperability, describes guiding principles for it and presents a high-level roadmap to enable greater coordinated efforts and industry-wide alignment. Learn more here.
