Mines require a wide range of spatial data, and the complexity increases as technologies advance. While these advancements create better representations of geological phenomena, moving complex data between proprietary software formats is time-consuming and prone to error. 

With the goal of improving 3D Data interoperability, this project group has developed the Open Mining Format (OMF), an open-source file specification format to support data interchange across software systems for geological and tropological data used across several business functions of mining operations. 

By enabling interoperability and efficiency across the mine value chain and reducing the possibility of errors during the data transfer process, implementing OMF within operations can put mining companies at ease, knowing that their valuable data will remain accurate as it is passed through different software platforms.  

The first version of OMF, released in 2017, supports basic structures including points, lines, surfaces, meshes, and volumes. The upcoming second version (2.0) supports block models, computer-generated representations of orebodies that contain valuable data about them. 

Industry support: Five major software companies – Seequent, Dassault Systèmes, Deswik, Micromine and Eclipse – have publicly committed to OMF, and several others are also contributing. Read a 2019 article with some of the supporting companies’ comments here. 

This project is led by the Data Access and Usage/Interoperability Working Group