The Ideon Council of Subsurface Experts (ICSE) brings together seasoned experts from across the mining value chain to help Ideon address the industry’s most pressing subsurface challenges. Arthur Maddever, PhD, is a leading innovator in geosensor technology. Over his 30 years at BHP, he helped create and implement world-first sensing systems across exploration & mining, including radiation-based materials characterisation – expertise he now brings to industry as a consultant.
In the final installment of our series spotlighting ICSE members, Arthur shares his perspectives on the evolution of geosensing, the technologies that accelerated its progress, and how commercial transparency is fostered within the mining industry.
This conversation has been edited for brevity and clarity.
Over your decades of experience in advanced sensing and resource innovation, what are some career highlights that stand out as particularly impactful?
My career has spanned three major research domains and a wide range of sensing modalities and the technologies that implement them. I began at BHP, a world-leading resources conglomerate, where I worked on laser- and optics-based industrial sensing for the company’s then steel division. A request to deploy an image-processing system on an airborne electromagnetic survey unexpectedly shifted my work into geophysics, leading to more than a decade of exploration-focused research within BHP’s Exploration & Mining team. When BHP closed its research laboratories in 2008, I moved to Perth to join a smaller corporate R&D group, where my focus shifted again – this time to geochemical sensing across a range of near-field mining applications.
Two of the most memorable career highlights for me include contributing to the development of Falcon™ —BHP’s airborne gravity gradiometer — and the FastGrade™ PFTNA (pulsed fast thermal neutron activation) logging tool, both of which were commercialised. In collaboration with Lockheed Martin, Falcon™ tackled one of the industry’s most complex technical challenges of the day in airborne gravity sensing: extracting and separating the very small gravity signals of interest from aircraft accelerations and vibrations. Its success marked a breakthrough that many at the time considered unattainable.
When FastGrade™ development began, downhole geochemistry was well established in the oil and gas industry but unsuitable for mining – tools were over-engineered, costly, and impractical to deploy. In collaboration with Australia’s Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) and French nuclear technology developer Sodern, the approach was re-engineered into a PFTNA-based in-situ geochemistry tool tailored for mining.
As an ICSE member, how do you see your role in guiding the mining industry towards stronger geosensing innovation in the years ahead?
I see my role as helping to create clarity and confidence around innovation. My focus has long been on helping to make complex, physics-based ideas accessible to a wider audience so that decision-makers and operators alike can see both the possibilities and the limits of new technologies. By combining forensic data analysis with geosensor experience, I aim to uncover practical insights and synergies that otherwise may be overlooked. In that way, I hope to support the industry in pursuing innovation that is not only exciting but also reliable, transparent, and grounded in real-world performance.
Having transitioned from research scientist to consultant, how has your perspective on innovation and collaboration in mining evolved?
My perspective on innovation and collaboration has broadened since transitioning to being a consultant. I still believe that successful innovation in collaborative mining settings rests on integrity, transparency, and respect for each partner’s goals. However, this must be paired with accountability, willingness to share meaningful operational data, and commitment to share both risks and rewards. Today, as a consultant, I am involved with both sides of this equation – helping mining companies clarify their needs and supporting technology developers in translating those needs into viable solutions.
Those key attributes of a successful collaboration remain, but realism is also essential. Technology suppliers must avoid over-selling, while mining customers must temper expectations with what is achievable. Both parties must have a solid understanding of the business case and the performance threshold required for the system to deliver meaningful value and have the confidence to deploy once that point has been reached. If the requirement is simply to detect rocks, there is no need to wait until the system can detect pebbles.
Over the course of your career, what major shifts have you observed in geosensing innovation across the mining industry?
Over time, I have observed various industry shifts in innovation, most prominently the transition from in-house R&D to a model where technology development is largely outsourced to partners. Alongside this, there has been a gradual move away from the traditional portfolio model, where it was accepted that most research projects would fail while a small number would deliver outsized returns, towards an expectation that each project must now stand on its own and deliver clear value.
Turning to geosensing specifically, the landscape has changed dramatically. Improved hardware, better calibration and maintenance practices, and a more mature understanding of each technology’s capabilities have all helped shift the industry away from the “trial once and abandon for years” mentality. The rise of data fusion has been another major development. With vastly increased computing power, combining multiple sensing modalities has become both feasible and advantageous, enabling systems with greater redundancy, robustness, and uncertainty estimation than ever before.
One striking transformation I’ve observed concerns the industry’s stance on Machine Learning (ML) and AI. When research on FastGrade™ started, ML was viewed with deep suspicion – no one wanted “a black box” as they saw it. Jump forward a decade, and it seems the industry now can’t get enough of AI, sometimes with more excitement than perspective.
Which moments or breakthroughs do you think clearly marked a turning point in how geosensing was perceived within the industry?
With respect to turning points and breakthroughs in geosensing, there are many. The introduction of FastGrade™ was just one, in my experience, seeking as it did to replace the long-standing tradition of sampling and assay in amenable environments. Another was undoubtedly the development of FalconTM, which established gravity gradiometry as a new pillar of airborne geophysics. Beyond my personal experience, breakthroughs such as NASA’s ChemCam (Chemistry and Camera) instrumentation deployed on Mars demonstrated the power of in-situ geochemical sensing at distance in hostile environments. Its success and that of other space-borne sensors helped inspire the mining sector to recognize the potential of similar technologies and pursue them.
