During surface coal mining, vast amounts of overburden waste materials—called spoils—are excavated and dumped, forming massive heaps, the sustainable exploitation of which is a top priority globally. This study addresses the advanced geotechnical characterization of spoil materials, focusing on lignite mine spoil heaps, which are often ignored due to their highly heterogeneous nature. This …
This study investigates the application of Compositional Data Analysis (CoDA) and multivariate statistical techniques to geochemical data from the soils of the Campania region. The dataset examined includes 3571 soil samples analyzed for 37 chemical elements. Principal Component Analysis (PCA) was employed to reduce the dataset’s dimensionality and identify key relationships between elements.…
Machine learning methods dealing with the spatial auto-correlation of the response variable have garnered significant attention in the context of spatial prediction. Nonetheless, under these methods, the relationship between the response variable and explanatory variables is assumed to be homogeneous throughout the entire study area. This assumption, known as spatial stationarity, is very quest…
A novel approach is presented for inferring covariance functions from sparse data using Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs). Two workflows are proposed: (1) direct prediction of variogram model parameters, and (2) prediction of experimental variogram values at specified lag distances, which are smooth and easily autofit. Workflow 1 achieves an r-squared of 0.80, while Workflow 2 attains a high…
Geostatistical cascade modeling of Mineral Resources is challenging in vein-type gold deposits. The narrow shape and long-range features of these auriferous veins, coupled with the paucity of drill-hole data, can complicate the modeling process and make the use of two-point geostatistical algorithms impractical. Instead, multiple-point geostatistics techniques can be a suitable alternative. How…
The aim of this work is to present a methodology for the reconstruction of missing fracture density within highly fractured intervals, which can represent preferential fluid flow pathways. The lack of record can be very common due to the intense presence of fractures, dissolution processes, or data acquisition issues. The superposition of numerous fractures makes the definition of fracture surf…
Geological 3-D models are very useful tools to predict subsurface properties. However, they are always subject to uncertainties, starting from the primary data. To ensure the reliability of the model outputs and, thus, to support the decision-making process, the incorporation and quantification of uncertainties have to be integrated into the geo-modeling strategies. Among all modeling approache…
Plurigaussian simulation is widely used to model geological facies in geosciences and is predominantly applied in mineral deposits and petroleum reservoirs exploration. GeoSim package builds geostatistical models of categorical regionalized variables via conditional or unconditional Plurigaussian simulation and co-simulation. Co-simulation between Gaussian Random Fields representing the geologi…
Multiple-point statistics algorithms allow modeling spatial variability from training images. Among these techniques, the Direct Sampling (DS) algorithm has advanced capabilities, such as multivariate simulations, treatment of non-stationarity, multi-resolution capabilities, conditioning by inequality or connectivity data. However, finding the right trade-off between computing time and simulati…
Almost all Multiple-Point Statistic (MPS) methods use internally a template matching method to select patterns that best match conditioning data. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the performances of ten of the most frequently used template matching techniques in the framework of MPS algorithms. Performance is measured in terms of computing efficiency, accuracy, and memory usage. The meth…