This year Unearthed partnered with BHP Billiton to host the Phase-X Challenge, which was drawn from the company’s real life operational data and mine planning scenarios.
Teams from universities and research organisations across the globe competed to create the best algorithm for optimising open pit mining phases, drawing from gigabytes of BHP Billiton’s operational data; many whom had no prior mining experience.
Open pit mining for minerals such as iron ore and nickel requires complex and informed planning. The order in which specific areas of the pit are mined is dependent on a number of critical factors, such as the processing capacity at the mine, the grade or quality of the mineral and the maximum slope of the pit walls. With thousands of options available, choosing which area of the pit to mine and in what order is an important and valuable challenge.
James Chan presenting his solutionPrizes offered for the winning submissions were $50,000 in cash prizes and $10,000 travel prize money to present the winning solutions at the 24th National Conference of the Australian Society for Operations Research (ASOR) in Canberra.
BHP Billiton collaborated with Unearthed on this challenge as part of its innovation agenda, aimed at improving safe productivity and maintaining competitiveness through the development of innovative approaches to real-life business challenges.
The online competition closed on 7th October and the winners were announced on Thursday last week at the Australian Society for Operations Research national conference, where Alan Bye, Vice President of Technology at BHP Billiton was on hand to present the trophies.
First prize of $35,000 was taken out by Thomas Li and Robin Candy. They are both PhD Candidates; Thomas in the Department of Applied Mathematics and Robin in the Research School of Computer Science at the Australian National University (ANU). Thomas has recently submitted his thesis and was particularly driven to submit a solution, due to his desire to improve on his second place in Unearthed’s Gold Fields Ore-X challenge last year, plus the level of difficulty of the challenge was a motivating factor for the team, especially in its lack of visibility.
In response to these barriers, they simplified the challenge by differing the length and time scale and developing a single algorithm that searches through a mixture of searching spaces, using multiple parameters including maximum mining years and economical discount rate; a variable accounting for opportunity cost.
Phase-X winners (L to R): James Chan, Wimbi Putra, Andi Nuhogro, Alan Bye (BHP Billiton), Thomas Li, Robin Candy and Gaurav Singh (BHP Billiton)“We investigated the problem in different length and time scales to find an economically beneficial open-pit mining sequence. This multi-scale approach coupled with our use of multi-threading ensures the solutions are found efficiently”, Thomas explained.
Second place was secured by Wimbi Putra, a University of Southampton student, who used a constructive heuristics method to design his solution for this multi-phase mining optimization problem, which had many constraints. “By building one feasible and optimal phase at a time, I was able to build a complete and optimal solution using iteration”, he specified.
Another University of Southampton alumni, Andi Nuhogro, came in at third place with a simulated annealing algorithm, which was applicable in optimizing design of a mining phase. “This implementation opens an opportunity for further research of the metaheuristics approach in mining application", he said.
Overall, the Phase-X Challenge was a thoroughly worthwhile undertaking that delivered desirable results for all involved. It was an exciting and rewarding opportunity for mathematical minds the world over to put their skills to the test on a tough challenge and for BHP to gain insights and multiple algorithm solutions that could immediately be incorporated into their mine scheduling process.
Zane Prickett, Director of Unearthed, said that he was amazed by the international response to the challenge. “The competition was truly global with 280+ participants from all continents and over 100 submissions in total with the top 3 taking unique mathematical approaches to one of mining’s largest challenges”.
Unearthed is committed to propelling the resources industry into its next generation. We are excited to be announcing the next online competition in the near future. Watch this space.