Role of hyperspectral remote sensing in a digital mine of future

Irrespective of its potential, mining sector in India is not developed to the extent it is developed in the countries with similar geological history. There are multiple reasons for it: less investment in mineral exploration, lack of a common repository of data used for mineral exploration, less advanced mineral and geological mapping, lack of digitization in end to end mining operations are a few important ones. This article addresses how some of them, especially digitization of various operation in mining industry, could be achieved using advanced remote sensing technique such as a hyperspectral imaging. The discussion makes a case for integrated sensing and analysis in different stages of mining value chain using a common knowledge repository which is accessible to all the connected sensing devices through a common protocol. It attempts to address how integrated sensing platform can be leveraged especially for challenging multi-scale mining and exploration operations.