Enabling Global-Scale Mine-Level Indicators from Satellite Observations

The global surge in mining, driven by decarbonisation and digitalisation, has uncovered a critical gap in our understanding of its environmental and social impacts and risks. Despite the seemingly abundant knowledge about mining operations, they remain largely unmeasured, even within the European Union, posing a challenge to sustainable development efforts. Essential indicators, such as geographical locations, waste generation, and details of extracted minerals and commodities, are surprisingly scant worldwide. Satellite images and artificial intelligence algorithms are prominent technologies to fill this knowledge gap. However, scaling the mapping of mining indicators to the global level remains a challenge due to the small size and low quality of training sets. The MINE-THE-GAP project will lay the foundations of an innovative methodology to scale up the production of mine-level indicators. Methodologically, the project presents a breakthrough by integrating high-precision data products from various satellite sources to substantially enrich training sets that will enable the creation of scalable artificial intelligence models to effectively map mine land use, waste generation, and types of extracted minerals and commodities. This approach will allow the production of mine-level indicators that are timely, locally relevant, and globally reliable, and ensure the continuous improvement of models beyond the project's timeline as new high-precision data becomes available. For the first time, MINE-THE-GAP will unlock new avenues in sustainability research, overcoming previous obstacles due to the lack of essential geoinformation on mining. The project will create the basis for scalable mining site monitoring, essential for enforcing European supply chain transparency laws and achieving the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals.