Barton Gold and SensOre form target generation partnership across Gawler Craton tenements

Barton Gold (ASX: BGD) and mining technology company SensOre (ASX: S3N) have formed an exclusive research and development investment partnership across areas of the central Gawler Craton in South Australia.

The companies will work to develop and trial SensOre’s artificial intelligence and machine learning discriminant predictive targeting (DPT) engine to the region, focusing on gold and copper mineralisation within a 60,000 square kilometre area surrounding Barton’s tenements.

Phase one analysis will aim to identify new copper-gold targets on Barton’s tenements while phase two will see target generation for in-field testing and DPT validation.

Barton has already contributed $45,000 to the development of phase one regional prospectivity mapping.

It will contribute another $350,000 to phase two.

The company will also provide its extensive private data sets for integration into a South Australian ‘data cube’ to refine and drill validate the DPT targeting model.

Exclusive DPT use

Further to the terms of the new partnership, Barton will be entitled to 10 years’ exclusive use of the DPT module across its project areas, during which time SensOre will not be allowed to compete with Barton to acquire gold or copper targets in the same region.

Subject to the commercialisation of gold and copper mineralisation at any new targets predicted by the DPT module, SensOre will be entitled to additional benefits in the form of royalties linked to the quantum of gold and copper produced.

Underexplored domain

Barton managing director Alex Scanlon said SensOre’s technology would allow for the exploration of a richly-mineralised yet underexplored domain.

“We are excited to be taking the next step toward the development and trial application of these technologies in the central Gawler Craton,” he said.

“Successful development of this technology is expected to accelerate our regional exploration success and further strengthen our strategic development advantage in the central Gawler Craton.”

DPT technology

SensOre’s DPT technology collects publicly-available data on a region and places it in a multi-dimensional hypercube or ‘data cube’.

The data comprises geophysics, surface geochemical, drilling and geological layers and derivatives information.

This ‘big data’ approach allows DPT’s analytics to accurately predict known endowment and generate targets for further discovery.

As the capacity of SensOre’s AI technologies expand to new terranes and a broader range of commodities, the company anticipates new targets will be identified and acquired in Australia and internationally.

SensOre believes the combination of big data and machine learning techniques will provide the next generation of exploration discovery.