DMT Group

The European Union Horizon 2020 project NEXT, was created to develop new geomodels, novel sensitive exploration technologies and data analysis methods which together are fast, cost- effective, environmentally safe, and potentially more acceptable to local actors and communities.

“The NEXT project has not only been successful but exceeded expectations. NEXT results have been already used by mineral exploration companies with a great success”, says Science Coordinator Vesa Nykänen from Geological Survey of Finland (GTK).

Great achievements

“We had seven work packages and ten objectives to start with. Results show that cooperation between partners has been fruitful and we have achieved excellent results in all work packages”, says Project Manager Juha Kaija from GTK. “Several outcomes from the project bring innovative

methods into mineral exploration and, most importantly, improve target generation and have the ability to increase the exploration productivity”, states Exploitation Manager Torsten Gorka from DMT GmbH & Co. KG.

One of its outcomes has already been picked by European Commission Innovation Radar. Independent experts of the Innovation Radar ranked the Novel electromagnetic (EM) survey system on UAV for mineral exploration, as a top innovation product developed in the NEXT project with a high market potential in the near future. “This survey system is a remarkable result of the NEXT project. The Finnish company Radai Oy started the development of it within the NEXT project and already it has proven to be highly versatile. Now the team at the Radai SME are developing the system further for commercial use”, Nykänen explains.

The other remarkable achievement of NEXT are the SOM (Self-Organizing Maps) Software Tools. The aim in the NEXT Project was to develop a new modern software and tools for data processing and integration. A new open-source software tool, GisSOM, for geoscientific data integration in combination with artificial neural works and self-organizing maps is available in GitHub.

“GTK and the German company BEAK worked jointly to create data fusion tools. GTK is responsible for the open-source SOM software tool and the BEAK is keen to develop it further for commercial use in their advangeo® software suite”, Nykänen explains.

An impressive number of publications

“The large number of publications in the project is particularly gratifying. There are more than 40 peer reviewed articles already published or submitted to scientific journals in the NEXT project”, informs Nykänen. All the publications will be released on open access platforms.

Social License to Explore (SLE) is nowadays an important element of exploration activities. In the NEXT project, three case studies in different contextual settings in Sweden and Finland were explored. Interviews with local organized actors and surveys among the local residents were conducted to investigate which factors shape a local communities’ attitudes towards mineral exploration. This research concluded that new sensitive technologies are generally welcomed by local people, but other factors affecting local actors’ attitudes are more important.

Proactive information and active community engagement at the outset of a project can help build good relations and hand on demonstrations of the new technologies can generate active interest among local actors. The outcomes of the research on the SLE thematic as well as write-ups on the new tools and improved insights on the way ore deposits are formed have been collected in the NEXT Practical Toolkit addressed to mineral exploration and mining companies. This publication has been purposely written in an easy-to-grasp language and is complemented with recommendations which are foremost addressed to mineral exploration companies about what to communicate about the new exploration technologies, why, how, when and where during the mineral exploration stages.

Help for clustering

Clustering with other ongoing EU funded projects was one of the objectives of the NEXT project. Although not originally foreseen at the outset, the NEXT project developed a new open-access module “Projects Map” on the Cordis portal. This was achieved through the active cooperation of the Community Research and Development Information Service (CORDIS) team, based in Luxembourg and the University of Lorraine in France. The new module, https://cordis.europa.eu/datalab/p2co.php?lv=en, allows to explore synergies in a highly efficient manner and should prove valuable not only to the domain of mineral exploration and mining, since the search function permits to look for potential synergies on any topic of scientific research the “jungle” of EU funded research projects.

The NEXT consortium was coordinated by the Geological Survey of Finland (GTK) and consisted of 16 partners from research institutes, academia, service providers and mining industry from the six EU member states Finland, Sweden, Germany, France, Malta and Spain. The NEXT budget amounted to 6.9 Million Euro, funded through the Horizon2020 Framework Programme.

The NEXT Final Event took place in September 2021.

Further information:
https://new-exploration.tech/

DMT GmbH & Co. KG, Essen/Germany, has launched a new online resource to support domestic and international owners and operators of critical infrastructure, offering a full portfolio of supporting services for vital systems and assets including power stations, healthcare facilities, roads, waterways, bridges and tunnels.

DMT’s online platform offers a broad spectrum of engineering and consultancy services designed to plan, build, support and maintain critical infrastructure across administration, energy, transport, health, and water. This platform will act as a one-stop information touchpoint for all stakeholders. DMT’s offering ensures that industries have access to reliable services in close digital or virtual proximity to their assets, providing remote and on-site services to enable consistent support for critical assets internationally.

Throughout 2020, a series of travel and entry restrictions have severely reduced international mobility, and limited access for foreign nationals travelling via air, rail, water and road. Many owners and people responsible for critical infrastructure rely on different subcontractors and international consultants to deliver and monitoring and critical services, the provision of which has been severely affected by the Covid-19 restrictions. As countries consider further lockdown actions into 2021, DMT’s agile “Resilience Matters” approach offers comprehensive in-house support, ensuring the continuity of service regardless of current and future periods of uncertainty.

DMT is also proposing a new set of minimum mandatory criteria for engineering and consultancy around critical infrastructure to improve the resilience of assets and systems. The criteria are: proximity to assets, advanced digitisation status, redundant reserves, agility, completeness of in-house service offering, personnel contingency, and long term relationships. DMT’s own history of prioritising long-term partnerships with asset owners has built trust, continuity and familiarity, which places its remote services in parity with an in-person approach.

Further information/Weitere Informationen:
DMT GmbH & Co. KG
www.dmt-group.com

The Westphalian University (WH) of Gelsenkirchen/Germany has appointed Daniela Gutberlet professor for the field of Environmental Technology and Logistics in the Mechanical Engineering, Environmental and Building Technology Department. Gutberlet, who previously worked in the Mining Engineering business segment of the DMT Group, Essen/Germany, started at the beginning of the summer semester 2021. (WH Gelsenkirchen/Si.)

The Management Board of the DMT Group in Essen/Germany expanded on 1st January 2018. Prof. Eiko Räkers (CEO) and Ulrich Pröpper are joined on the Management Board by Maik Tiedemann and Jens-Peter Lux. Tiedemann was until recently a division manager for MAN Diesel & Turbo. On 1st July 2018, he will become Chairperson of the Management Board and will assume responsibility for the Industrial Engineering area of the business. Lux, having held various managerial roles at DMT over the past 15 years, will be the managing director responsible for the fields of Geoengineering & Exploration and Mining Consulting & Engineering. Alongside his responsibility for Facility & Product Safety, Ulrich Pröpper will work jointly with Lux on tasks in the seismic segment and will also head up the Human Resources division. Prof. Räkers is scheduled to retire from his role as Chair of the Management Board on 1st July 2018.

Das Essener Explorations- und Engineeringunternehmen DMT GmbH & Co. KG hat einen Auftrag des kanadischen Öl- und Gasproduzenten Vermilion Energy Inc. zur Durchführung einer seismischen Erkundung in den Niederlanden erhalten. Die Feldarbeiten haben nun begonnen.

Der Auftrag über die 3D-Sprengseismik zur Erkundung des Untergrunds besteht aus zwei Teilen. Von August bis November 2017 führte DMT in den Gebieten Akkrum und Südfriesland seismische Messungen durch. Zwischen August und Dezember 2018 folgen voraussichtlich die Arbeiten in Süd- und Südwestfriesland. Die ersten beiden Messflächen sind zusammen etwa 315 km² groß. Es werden insgesamt ca. 10.000 Schusspunkte gesetzt. Das Projekt stellt die erste große Seismikkampagne nach über zehn Jahren in den Niederlanden dar.

„Wir bewegen uns hier in einem sehr sensiblen Naturökosystem, daher arbeiten wir sehr eng mit Naturschützern und den Permitleuten zusammen“, erklärt DMT-Projektleiter Rüdiger Misiek. „Eine weitere Herausforderung ist das extrem wechselnde Gelände, Sumpf und Moorgebiete, mit den typischen Gräben, die überbrückt werden müssen, und den malerischen holländischen Städten, wie z. B. Drachten, eine Stadt nahezu ohne Verkehrszeichen (Shared Space) mit ihren engen Gassen und dichten Bebauungen.“

Further information:
DMT GmbH & Co. KG
www.dmt-group.com

The technology service provider DMT GmbH & Co. KG, Essen/Germany, has been awarded a contract for a high-resolution 3D vibro-seismic survey to determine the geological structure of the subsoil in the Upper Rhine Plain. The seismic project will deploy approximately 7,000 wireless geophones and cover a total of around 58 km² in the Landau region (Rhineland-Palatinate). DMT will use vibro trucks of different sizes, depending on the nature of the terrain and how built-up particular areas are. The project is for Winters-hall, the largest German producer of crude oil and natural gas, and is due to last from December 2016 to March 2017.

Special about this survey is that due to the range of vehicles used, DMT is able to adapt extremely well to the environment. This means that smaller vehicles are used in residential areas. Furthermore DMT uses wireless geophones as measuring sensors. By eliminating the need for cables, there is no trouble crossing railway tracks and roads. Such wireless technology also facilitates large measuring campaigns in particularly short time periods, therefore conserving the natural environment.

Further information/Weitere Informationen:
DMT GmbH & Co. KG
www.dmt-group.com

For 278 years DMT GmbH & Co. KG in Essen and its predecessor organizations have been providing services for the mining industry, for 25 years operating under the brand name DMT. DMT was founded in 1990 to tap into new markets outside of the German coal industry. Today DMT operates as a provider of engineering and technical consulting services for the oil and gas market, mining, infrastructure and the process and mechanical engineering market. Due to the new heavy international focus of the brand, the DMT Group generated a higher turnover abroad in 2014 than from domestic sales.

DMT’s roots lie in the early hard coal industry surrounding the Rhine and Ruhr rivers and the founding of the organization Bergamtskasse Graftschaft Mark in 1737. At first solely responsible for the finances of the supervisory mining authorities, a merger in 1864 formed the Westfälische Berggewerkschaftskasse (WBK) and greatly expanded the company’s focus to include miners’ training, research, testing, and consulting and subsequently developing it into one of Germany’s leading research and testing facilities as safety in mines became more stringent.
As a result of the German mining crisis in the 1960s and the foreseeable decline of the hard coal industry in the decades thereafter, the WBK joined forces with Bergbauforschung Essen and Versuchsgrubengesellschaft in Dortmund in 1990 under the new name DMT. Their mission was to develop and exploit new markets and regions in order to become independent from the German coal industry, and what better initial credential than the cutting-edge technology which had already made German coal mining the safest worldwide? “DMT has fulfilled its mission” explains DMT CEO Prof. Dr. Eiko Räkers. “However, DMT still is and will remain a reliable partner for the German coal industry up to the closure of the last German mines in 2018 and beyond, assisting in all issues related to hard coal mining”. Räkers adds: “Upcoming challenges in Germany include the control of rising mine water, monitoring the after-effects of mining and the rehabilitation and redevelopment of abandoned mining sites”.

With a total of 14 engineering and consulting firms based at 30 offices worldwide DMT has earned the title of global group. Its service portfolio covers exploration, engineering, consulting and geotechnics as well as testing and monitoring. The development and manufacture of diverse industrial measuring systems and test products is a further string to DMT’s bow.

Since 2007 DMT has been a member of TÜV NORD GROUP with over 10,000 employees and offices in 70 countries. DMT forms one division within TÜV NORD GROUP and is a brand in its own right for the natural resources and infrastructure sectors. DMT has established itself as an international engineering service provider and continues to grow and prosper at international level, with the brand “DMT” binding its manifold activities. (DMT GmbH/Si)