Title: Mining Goes Digital
Description: The abbreviation ?APCOM? stands for ?Applications for Computers and Operations Research
in the Minerals Industry?. When the conference started in 1964, it was an informal meeting
of scientists from different universities in the USA together with the ?Society of Mining
Engineers? (SME) of the United States. During the years the APCOM conference was
performed in a mostly bi-annual rhythm. Up to today APCOM maintained its original logo
formed around a punch card clearly remembering the historic origin of the conference from
the times prior to the revolution caused by the era of semiconductors.
In the beginning, APCOM focused on the optimization of geostatistics and resource
estimation and a number of methods used in these fields were initially presented and discussed
on APCOM conferences. This field still today is an important part of any APCOM.
During the years, information technology has dramatically developed, new algorithmic
methods evolved and the entire fields of electronic communication, machine automation,
autonomous machines and process optimization developed. Consequently, today, APCOM
is much more than a meeting of specialists in geostatistics and resource estimation: The
APCOM has expanded to a conference covering all kinds of Information and Communication
Technology in the mineral industry: Already in 2005 on the conference in Tuscon/AZ, the
term ?Mining Process Optimization? was presented as the next paradigm shift in mining
after mechanization and automation, which marked another example of the continued
innovative impact of the APCOM. Well ahead of the current discussions about ?Digital
Transformation?.

Subjects: Earth sciences, geography, environment, planning