Predictive geometallurgy: An interdisciplinary key challenge for mathematical geosciences

Predictive geometallurgy tries to optimize the mineral value chain based on a precise and quantitative understanding of: the geology and mineralogy of the ores, the minerals processing, and the economics of mineral commodities. This chapter describes the state of the art and the mathematical building blocks of a possible solution to this problem. This solution heavily relies on all classical fields of mathematical geosciences and geoinformatics, but requires new mathematical and computational developments. Geometallurgy can thus become a new defining challenge for mathematical geosciences, in the same fashion as geostatistics has been in the first 50 years of the IAMG.