It is a privilege to introduce “Advances in Applied Strategic Mine Planning”, a collection of technical papers addressing core aspects of the sustainable, responsible and optimal development and utilization of Earth’s mineral resources. In a world of uncertain markets, mismatches between demand and reserve base growth (supply), emerging technologies, and new technical challenges and solutions, this book aims to support knowledge dissemination and mobilization of new concerns, concepts, methods and technologies.

The Symposium of the International Association for Computer Methods and Advances in Geomechanics (IACMAG) was held at the Indian Institute of Technology Gandhinagar, Gujarat, India, during the period 5–7 March 2019. Computer applications of geomechanics have been gaining much popularity from the early days of the International Conference on Numerical Methods in Geomechanics at Vicksburg in 1972, Blacksburg in 1976 and Innsbruck, Austria, in 1988. It was in that very context the IACMAG was established and it has been growing ever since with various stakeholders contributing significantly from different nations across the world. IACMAG aims at fostering multidisciplinary research and ideas pertaining to geomechanics with particular emphasis on integrating both the practical and the fundamental aspects. The field of geomechanics has evolved with time, and in this regard, IACMAG takes into account the need for judicious simplification of fundamental aspects of geomechanics with a proper amalgamation of theory and experimentation in order that they find their use in practical problems and challenges faced in the industry today. <...>

The proceedings of ICADD-10 is a collection of 56 technical papers, including 8 keynotes, accepted by the conference. ICADD-10 is the 10th event of the series since 1995. The conference series have been organised every 2–3 years focusing initially on the discontinuous deformation analysis method and gradually covering the discontinuous numerical methods and coupling techniques with other numerical approaches, for geomechanics and geoengineering.

This paper focuses on the relationships between the geological model and exploration techniques for porphyry Cu ± Au deposits, with reference to the discovery record and exploration practices over the past fifteen years. The porphyry model is built on a long record of study dating back to the 1960s which has been gradually refined to encompass differences and complexities in mineralization and hydrothermal alteration assemblages resulting from varying intrusion (‘porphyry’) chemistries, differing wallrock geochemical and structural controls, the upwards zonation into the lithocap environment, and the overprinting effects of deep weathering.