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198 C.J. MOON & M.K.G. WHATELEY

selection of such technical software is often an resource and/or reserve calculations, or
emotive issue and often depends upon a per- Whittle or Earthworks products for strategic
son’s previous exposure to and their familiarity mine planning.
with the software, or its impressive graphics
capability. Unfortunately software is rarely
selected for the relevance to the operation of 9.4 FURTHER READING
the functions that it provides. There are merits
and weaknesses in each package. In addition, This is a rapidly developing area and there
improvements keep appearing and a different is not a single source covering the field.
decision may be reached if the selection exer- There are many good texts covering the use of
cise was repeated at a different moment in GIS but probably the best starting point is the
time. general textbook of Longley et al. (2001) which
Most operations have selected geological is a cut-down version of the comprehensive
and mine modeling software that suits their Longley et al. (1999). Geographic Information
budget, and geological and mining complexity. Systems for Geoscientists by Bonham-Carter
Occasionally, a mining house will standardize (1994) remains the only text aimed at geologists,
on one software package, e.g. BHP Billiton uses although the field has advanced significantly
Vulcan software. The software modeling sys- since the book was published.
tems currently available include Surpac and The use of mining-specific software is not
Minex from the Surpac Minex Group, Maptek’s well covered in the formal literature although
Vulcan, Mincom, Datamine, Mintec’s much information is available on the Internet.
MineSight, and Gemcom. Other operations For Spanish speakers the book by Bustillo and
may have task-specific proprietary software, Lopez (1997) provides a well illustrated guide to
such as Isatis (Geovariances 2001), used for exploration geology and mine design.