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      Required and desired: breakthroughs for future-proofing mineral and metal extraction

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      Mineral Economics
      Springer Berlin Heidelberg
      Mining, Digitalisation, Metals

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          Abstract

          The global industrial mining sector is, like other sectors, undergoing an unprecedented transformation pushed by global sustainability and climate challenges. The need to increase productivity and efficiency of mineral extraction along with increasing pressure from a wide range of stakeholders to decarbonise the industry and make mining practices more sustainable, accountable, and socially acceptable are driving the adoption of automation and digitalisation technologies as well as the electrification of equipment and the implementation of more sustainable energy solutions for the industry. Automation and digitalisation are changing the way minerals and metals are extracted and provide important tools for designing and implementing the mine of the future: a digitally integrated, autonomous mine where no humans need to be put in harm’s way and in which the connected systems are able to reduce the ever-increasing complexity to such an extent that improved decision-making can be realised in real time. Mining as an industry still has a way to go to reach the potential of automation and digitalisation on the one hand, and alternative drive systems and sustainable power generation on the other. This paper will give an overview of empirically derived leading technologies underlying the current transformation and will place them in the context of the data-information-value-chain that can provide a more systematic approach to describe the various technologies and, in particular, their interrelationships. This can support a better understanding of assessing the overall technological maturity of an operation, especially with respect to their evolution from automation of equipment towards autonomous systems. There is no reason to doubt that, from a technology perspective, the digitally connected, autonomous, and carbon-free mine have the potential to become a reality. Breakthrough effects can be expected to come not from any single technology but rather from successfully developing, implementing, and integrating the full suite of (available) automation and digitalisation technologies across entire mining operations and moving towards digitally integrated, autonomous systems considering the process and its interrelations holistically (Clausen et al.  2020b). However, in order to get there, mining companies need to consider not only the technological aspects of this transformation. For successfully responding to the changing landscape of stakeholder expectations and future-proofing the industry requires, the authors argue that mining companies need to adopt a mind-set of the human-centred climate smart mine (Clausen and Sörensen 2021). In addition, mining companies need to reconsider their role in the economic, social, and environmental ecosystem they are embedded in so they can break through traditions that keep them from successfully positioning themselves as builders of social value.

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          Toward a model of the effective transfer of scientific knowledge from academicians to practitioners: qualitative evidence from the commercialization of university technologies

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            Identification of digital technologies and digitalisation trends in the mining industry

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              Innovation in the Mining Industry: Technological Trends and a Case Study of the Challenges of Disruptive Innovation

              Innovation plays a critical role in the mining industry as a tool to improve the efficiency of its processes, to reduce costs, but also to meet the increasing social and environmental concerns among communities and authorities. Technological progress has also been crucial to allow the exploitation of new deposits in more complex scenarios: lower ore grades, extreme weather conditions, deeper deposits, harder rock mass, and high-stress environments. This paper discusses the importance of innovation for the mining industry and describes the mechanisms by which it is carried out. It includes a review of the drivers and actors involved and current trends. The digital transformation process that the industry is going through is analyzed, along with other relevant trends that are likely to shape the mining of the future. Additionally, a case study is presented to illustrate the technical and economic implications of developing a disruptive innovation project.
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                Author and article information

                Contributors
                eclausen@amt.rwth-aachen.de
                Journal
                Miner Econ
                Mineral Economics
                Springer Berlin Heidelberg (Berlin/Heidelberg )
                2191-2203
                2191-2211
                13 July 2022
                13 July 2022
                : 1-17
                Affiliations
                GRID grid.1957.a, ISNI 0000 0001 0728 696X, Institute for Advanced Mining Technologies (AMT), , RWTH Aachen University, ; Aachen, Germany
                Author information
                http://orcid.org/0000-0003-4171-9604
                Article
                328
                10.1007/s13563-022-00328-0
                9281351
                76f8d2ea-e4e6-403b-9d2f-a66d6e1d1082
                © The Author(s) 2022

                Open AccessThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.

                History
                : 6 October 2021
                : 8 June 2022
                Funding
                Funded by: RWTH Aachen University (3131)
                Categories
                Original Paper

                mining,digitalisation,metals
                mining, digitalisation, metals

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