What is the Mineral System approach?
Michel Jébrak - It is a comprehensive and systematic methodology used in mineral and hydrocarbon exploration to gain an understanding of and assess the potential for deposits in a given area. Based on work that began in France as early as the 1970s, particularly at BRGM which was already characterising types of mineral deposits, the approach has been fully implemented since the 2000s for mineral exploration, mainly in Australia and subsequently in many Nordic countries and Canada. The rise in power of IT tools such as GIS and the emergence of big data and large databases have had two major consequences in this area. First, they facilitate interdisciplinary work, whereas we were previously organised in separate disciplines (geology, geophysics, geochemistry, for example). Second, the large-scale processing of quantitative data, made possible by the increase in computing power, makes such work easier. This means that we can develop exploration guides for each family of minerals. With the arrival of artificial intelligence and non-linear data structures, the pace of change is visibly increasing.
