Objectives
The aim of EO-MINERS is to bring into play EO-based methods and tools to facilitate and improve interaction between the mineral extractive industry and society in view of its sustainable development while improving its societal acceptability.
Strategic objectives
Mining companies, regulatory bodies and stakeholders need various EO-based tools and methods adequately juxtaposed regarding the local contexts and applications (in compliance with GEO and GMES objectives and tasks).
Forecasting impacts and footprints and relevant remediation measures require developing prospective tools. GIS using EO data will enable to visualise prospective evolution over time (flow modelling), playing on one or several GIS-layer parameter. For instance, population migration flow is often taken into account during the pre-feasibility phase, but not properly monitored further.
Cumulative impacts must be adequately addressed at regional scale (valley, district...), including induced impacts (population migration, livestock impact …) with respect to the concept of heavily exploited area.
As the EU is strongly interested in the establishment of measures for raw material flow analysis, especially for imported mineral resources, this project will contribute to the development of measures that can be used to analyze the mining operations taking the individual potential ecological and societal footprint into account.
Scientific and technical objectives
The social acceptability of a mining project, from exploration to closure, is among the major key issues to be dealt with. EO-MINERS scientific and technical objectives are to:
- assess policy requirements at macro (public) and micro (mining companies) levels and define environmental, socio-economic, societal and sustainable development criteria and indicators to be possibly dealt using
Earth Observation (EO); - use existing EO knowledge and carry out new developments on demonstration sites to demonstrate the capabilities of integrated EO-based methods and tools in monitoring, managing and contributing reducing the environmental and societal footprints of the extractive industry during all phases of a mining project and
- contribute making available reliable and objective information about affected ecosystems, populations and societies, to serve as a basis for a sound “trialogue” between industrialists, governmental organisations and stakeholder
