A Strategy for Sustainable Development of Nonrenewable Resources using Spatial Prediction Models

This contribution provides an analytical strategy applicable in mineral exploration to not only predicting the location of undiscovered mineral resources but also estimating the probability of the next discovery at that location. In addition, the strategy is applicable to the likely environmental impacts of developing the resources as a result of the exploration. General concepts of spatial prediction, of the likelihood ratio model, and of a two-stage approach to derive the probability of the next discovery in each prediction class are introduced.Two examples of predictions of undiscovered deposits are discussed for the respective extreme situations of rich and poor spatial databases. They are not yet fully developed to cover environmental-impact prediction; nevertheless, they provide the basic decisional elements as the estimator of the conditional probability of the next discovery applicable to either resource exploration or to environmental protection. The estimation of the probability of the next discovery through the validation technique is the most critical element in spatial prediction modeling. A review of deposit and geoenvironmental deposit models provides the foundations of predictive analysis in sustainable development terms.