20 years of modelling the earth!

Mira Geoscience marks its 20th anniversary championing integrated interpretation for better earth modelling, interpretation, and data management. Integrated interpretation has been at the heart of our strategy and proven time and time again to be the most effective method for construction of plausible geological models. In celebration of our 20th anniversary, we asked our President and Founder, John McGaughey, to share his thoughts on today’s Mira Geoscience.

“Originally the company was conceived as a consulting firm providing integrated earth modelling expertise for mineral exploration,” said John. “By the time we started, the business plan had evolved to providing both software and consulting services for the mining industry. Back in 1999, we had no alternative but to develop and customize software—so we thought we might as well market it, giving our customers a choice between our technical services or doing it themselves with our technology and training.”

Our team has always been at the forefront of the development and implementation of quantitative geological modelling and geophysical inversion across the range of geophysical methods. Many of our clients, small and large, acknowledge our role in exploration discovery.

“It’s always been about developing a better understanding of the relationship between geology, geophysical responses, and rock properties,” said John as he highlighted a few milestones:

• 1999 was the launch of GOCAD Mining Suite, our 3D geological software based on Emerson Paradigm Holding LLC’s SKUA-GOCAD^TM platform, and RPDS (Rock Property Database System).
• In 2005 we published reference manuals describing the geophysical responses of world-class ore bodies based on integrated geological, geophysical, and petrophysical modelling as part of the Camiro consortium.
• By 2007, when we opened our Vancouver office under the banner Advance Geophysical Interpretation Centre, Mira Geoscience boasted one the world’s largest and most experienced teams of geophysical interpretation experts in the minerals industry with a team working from offices in Brisbane and Perth as well as Montreal and Vancouver.
• In 2008, the company started to widen its focus to exploration targeting with the development of the Targeting Workflow, which we now also extensively deploy in geotechnical hazard assessment.
• 2015 brought the introduction of Geoscience ANALYST, a free 3D visualization and communication tool, and we became owners of VP Geophysics Suite (VPmg and VPem1D), geologically-based forward modelling and inversion programs.
• 2017 saw the commercial launch of Geoscience INTEGRATOR, a 4D data management, query, and visualization system, developed as part of CEMI’s Ultra Deep Mining Network. By 2018 we extended this product to the exploration community through NSERC-CMIC’s Footprints project.

Since then, we have adapted many of our tools and techniques with machine learning technology.

“I am excited to see what is in store for us over the course of this year. Our vision continues to be powerful and the right message for our colleagues and customers – compile, model, and analyze for valid interpretation that honours all data. We believe in the power of knowledge, data, and technology integration to address our clients’ geoscience-based challenges.”

Coming up:

• Creation of a new geophysical consortium that will drive the development of geophysical tools in Geoscience ANALYST.
• GIFtools, an easy-to-use user interface for the industry-standard UBC-GIF forward modelling and inversion codes, with a Geoscience ANALYST interface.
• NSERC-CMIC’s Footprints project results, including a Geoscience INTEGRATOR repository containing all project-generated data, will be made publicly available.