Canada’s Open Science and Data Platform (OSDP), built by Natural Resources Canada to support the federal Major Projects Office, is now central to mine permitting, aggregating geospatial science, environmental monitoring, mapping tools and regulatory records from federal, provincial and territorial sources into a single online portal. Used on Newmont’s Red Chris mine expansion in British Columbia’s Golden Triangle, the OSDP lets users layer Treaty boundaries, species-at-risk data, transmission lines, watersheds and nearby projects, with updates fed automatically via APIs rather than static uploads. NRCan reports about 200,000 unique users, 70% repeat visits, and is adding datasets by roughly 10% annually, with plans for AI-driven search and machine-readable historical assessments.

idoba has released Version 2.0 of idoba.sim, a cloud-based simulation tool for short-term planning in underground hard rock mines that now models development advance and truck load-and-haul in a single run. Planning teams can simultaneously simulate development headings and both development and production haulage, rather than running separate models for each activity stream. The integrated workflow should improve cycle time analysis, fleet utilisation planning and identification of bottlenecks around development-ore interactions.

Deswik is rolling out its NOVA platform to unify open-pit mine scheduling, stockpile blending and haulage into a single planning environment, replacing the traditional mix of disconnected spreadsheets and point tools. By running mining, blending and truck fleet scenarios together, NOVA can expose crusher feed gaps, mill underutilisation and haul road bottlenecks early in the planning cycle rather than after shift start. For engineers, the integrated workflow tightens compliance to long-term plans, improves material movement visibility and reduces manual data hand-offs between geology, planning and operations.