CONDITIONAL BIAS FOR

MULTIVARIATE RESOURCES
ESTIMATION
Diego Vergara & Xavier Emery
 Contents
• Introduction
• Statement of the problem
• Methodology
• Case study
• Results
• Conclusions
 Introduction
• Production plans rely on a model that provide
estimates of mineral grades on a block-by-block basis

• Most of the time, several cross-correlated species are

of interest, so that a multivariate estimation is needed.

• The estimator should be accurate and unbiased, in

order to minimize the discrepancies between true and
estimated grades.
 Introduction
• A desirable property is unbiasedness: on average, the
estimation error is close to zero, i.e., the estimated
mean grade is close to the true mean grade.

• Although globally unbiased, an estimator can be

biased when considering conditioning constraints, for
instance, that the estimate is greater than a cut-off
grade
→ conditional bias
 Introduction
• Example of conditionally biased estimator

Material
sent to dump

The gravity center of the entire

scatter diagram is on the
The gravity center of this
diagonal line: the estimated
portion of the diagram is
mean grade coincides with the
above the diagonal line:
true mean grade.
the estimated mean
grade is less than the
Cut-off
true mean grade.
 Introduction
• Example of conditionally biased estimator

Material
sent to mill

The gravity center of

this portion of the
diagram is below the
diagonal line: the
estimated mean grade
Cut-off is greater than the
true mean grade.
 Statement of the problem
• Conditional biases may provoke an incorrect economic
assessment of the mining project and the non-
compliance of production plans and environmental
restrictions.

• In the multivariate case, a bias can appear on the

estimate of one variable when considering a
conditioning constraint on another variable.
 Statement of the problem
• In the multivariate case, conditional bias may be
influenced by:

– Type of estimator (univariate or multivariate?)

Is there an improvement when a multivariate estimation
method is considered?

– Design of search neighbourhood

Neighbourhoods containing few data are likely to produce
conditionally biased estimates
 Statement of the problem
• A case study corresponding to a porphyry copper
deposit located in northern Chile is considered, in
which it is of interest to predict the copper and
arsenic grades
 Methodology
• Construction of a reference model by conditional
cosimulation
– Cell declustering
– Normal scores transformation
– Variogram calculation and modelling
– Simulation by turning bands
– Back transformation
– Regularisation (block averaging) to selective mining support
 Methodology
• Construction of a predictive model of copper and
arsenic grades
– Variogram calculation and modelling
– Definition of cokriging neighbourhood
– Prediction of copper and arsenic grades by block cokriging
 Methodology
• Determination of conditional bias
– Comparison of true and estimated copper grades subject to
a threshold on estimated copper grade
– Comparison of true and estimated arsenic grades subject to
a threshold on estimated arsenic grade
– Comparison of true and estimated average grades subject to
thresholds on estimated copper and arsenic grades
 Case study
• Presentation of the data
– Exploration drill hole samples with information on total
copper and arsenic grades
– Data located in a volume of 160 × 225 × 200 m
– Copper and arsenic are strongly correlated
– Information of arsenic grade is missing at some sampling
locations

Variable Number of data Minimum Maximum Mean Standard

deviation

Copper grade (%) 5796 0 24.91 1.38 2.00

Arsenic grade
3878 0 34.94 1.00 2.16
(g/kg)
Case study
 Case study
• Choice of search neighbourhood
Three moving neighbourhoods are considered
– Neighbourhood 1: 4 data of each variable, in order to minimize the
smoothing effect of cokriging
– Neighbourhood 2: 16 data of each variable
– Neighbourhood 3: 60 data of each variable, in order to get as
accurate results as possible
 Case study
• Choice of block size
Simulation and estimation are performed on a grid containing
9072 blocks with size 10 × 10 × 10 m
 Results
• Comparison of true and cokriged copper grades
subject to a cut-off on cokriged copper grade
 Results
• Comparison of true and cokriged arsenic grades
subject to a cut-off on cokriged arsenic grade
 Results
• Comparison of true and kriged grades subject to
cut-offs on kriged copper and arsenic grades
(As < 1500 g/t; neighbourhood with 60 data)
 Results
• Comparison of true and cokriged grades subject to
cut-offs on cokriged copper and arsenic grades
(As < 1500 g/t; neighbourhood with 60 data)
 Conclusions
• The use of neighbourhoods with few data leads to a
considerable conditional bias in the grade estimates,
irrespective of whether kriging or cokriging is
considered.

• Conditional bias is reduced by increasing the number

of data (to 16 or more) selected in the neighbourhood.
 Conclusions
• In the multivariate case, there may be conditional bias
in the kriging estimates when considering conditions
(cut-offs or thresholds) jointly on several variables.

• Conditional bias decreases when cokriging is used,

although the impact is less than the size of the
neighbourhood.
 Acknowledgements

• FONDECYT project 1090013

• ALGES Laboratory at University of Chile