Preview - Volume 2011, Issue 151, 2011

The goal of exploration geophysics is to infer the nature of buried structure and, in particular, generate drill targets that lead to a mineral deposit discovery or reserve delineation. As a profession, we aim to turn geophysical data into geological information. Most geophysical techniques enable inferences to be made from airborne, ground-based or bore-hole data through a deterministic process whereby a single model ‘answer’ is generated. Well-founded algorithms include uncertainty estimates for different parameters in the model and/or some form of model validation. This approach has been successful to date, and we advocate the continued use of deterministic algorithms.

We also advocate that alternate strategies for extracting information from data are used alongside deterministic strategies. If we consider two general properties of data inference approaches, that of (1) assurance and (2) opportunity, deterministic approaches score poorly regarding opportunity: that is, useful answers may be missed. Alternate strategies can be computationally intensive, but several important classes of approach, summarised in this article are now tractable on workstation or high-specification notebook PCs. By using a range of strategies we can maximise both assurance and opportunity for a particular data inference goal and obtain extra, useful geological information from our data.