Adopting SLM is a SLaM dunk

Companies in all industries are placing sustainability at the core of their business strategy. In mining, one of the key ways this is taking form is by implementing technologies that integrate land management.

Sustainable land management (SLM) is defined as a set practices and technologies that integrate the management of land, water, biodiversity and other environmental resources while also meeting evolving human needs to ensure long-term sustainability for livelihoods and the environment. Land owners/operators must govern, in real-time, the environmental impacts of mining to achieve sustainable land management.

Our GEOVIA team was already working on how to address this challenge when an opportunity accelerated this work in mid-2021: our company announced the 2021 LEAP for Sustainability Challenge. This internal contest saw 100 participants forming 40 teams, and ultimately seven groups were named finalists. Among the finalists was a team that named themselves SLaM!, (Sustainable Land Management) whose stated mission was to improve sustainable land management through operational performance, monitoring and tracking to minimize and mitigate environmental effects.

Each of the finalists was granted dedicated support to integrate their solution into the 3DEXPERIENCE portfolio, and ultimately market it to our customers. The SLAM! team has been working hard to develop further their initial proof of concept.

Why is Sustainable Land Management important?

Mining companies need holistic, wide-ranging approaches to sustainability. They also need a thoughtful approach to resources and communities, as well as an overarching, future-focused vision and strategy. Technology can help achieve all of this.

Assessing the sustainability of mining operations requires measuring, monitoring and working to improve various environmental performance metrics. Not only can these metrics determine whether a mining operation is sustainable, they can also dictate a company’s principles and financial performance.

Enter Dassault Systèmes offering for SLM: a governing system that aggregates disparate systems and data through the 3DEXPERIENCE platform, creating a virtual twin to minimize environmental impacts of mining operations for responsible, sustainable growth.

Small footprints have big impacts. How can our SLM solution make an impact on your mining operations?

3DS’s SLM solution enables users to govern environmental impacts of mining in real-time to embed regenerative and responsible mining operations, through digital continuity between geospatial analysis, interactive analytics and structured collaboration.

Internal and external stakeholders involved in the project – from various teams within a mining company, NGOs, local communities and others – can benefit throughout the project’s lifecycle, including:

• Permit Governance: create digital continuity between the natural environment, claim boundaries and built infrastructure; claim status, ownership and associated cost analysis
• Environmental Stewardship: accurately and transparently evaluate your company’s sustainability performance against standards/frameworks/principles to allow for business agility; gain visibility on data, using powerful analytics integrated with geospatial data and connected data
• Social Value & Compliance: aggregate and report data to propagate stewardship of the land on which users can operate in accordance with regulator and company compliance; assessing future-proofing in terms of social impact and health and safety

SLM is layered on the 3DEXPERIENCE platform, and goes beyond GEOVIA’s core capabilities harnessing robust Dassault Systèmes’ robust portfolio of technologies proven in other industries 

It empowers customers to track and govern SLM-related KPI’s and ESG benchmarks in a 360˚ view. It provides structured collaboration, dynamic analytics to transform large volumes of heterogeneous, multi-source data into meaningful, real-time information intelligence, and interactive advanced visualization on a unified user experience. Users access a centralized data source to track and analyze sustainability data, helping them identify opportunities, increase performance, mitigate risks, improve operational performance and create more sustainable operations – all of which can generate the potential to improve profitability and growth.

Specific benefits of 3DS SLM:

• REDUCE Environmental Impact
  • Measure & Track: key indicators for regulatory, social and environmental targets
  • Accurately evaluate sustainability performance over time to reduce environmental impact
• IMPROVE Operational Performance
  • Live & Actionable Metrics: identify opportunities, increase performance and mitigate risks
  • Improve operational performance to create more sustainable operations, with potential to improve profitability
• ADVANCE Business Agility
  • Drive Data-based Decisions: govern real-time data from a secure and centralized single source
  • Navigate powerful analytics integrated with geospatial data to give all stakeholders the same viewpoint
• VISIBLE Governance
  • Integrate sustainability throughout every aspect of operations
  • Structured collaboration within a connected data environment

Conclusion

Today, there is no difference between operating a mine for efficiency and operating for sustainability; both are critical. Mining companies must invest in technology for both the innovation and sustainability required to reduce not only their footprint and increase their handprint, but also to help shepherd change across the entire mining value chain.

The 3DS SLM solution can help minimize environmental impacts of mining operations for responsible and sustainable growth.