The success of a new mine depends highly on the recovery of tons and grades estimated using the information gathered during a mineral exploration survey. These estimates should be able to alert for possible risk or uncertainty in resource estimates, possibly built using confidence intervals associated with each estimate. Categories of mineral resources are divided according sample spacing and on the degree reliability at each class of resources, namely measured, indicated and inferred. Various systems of classification are available world wide and for the purpose of this study the JORC (Joint Organization Reserves Committee) system was employed. This paper proposes a methodology to assess uncertainty associated with volume and tonnages reported in a mineral deposit inventory. To illustrate the methodology a coal deposit in South Brazil was used. On this deposit 340 drill holes were available containing coal thickness data and among them 236 contain coal seam specific gravity measurements. The results provided the tools to measure the uncertainty based on a sound theoretical procedure.
Geostatistics; conditional simulation; resources
