The NORCAT Underground Center - Driving Technology Adoption in the Global Mining Industry
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duval-donduval-sm-sdm-2025-thesis_Redacted.pdf
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Author(s)
Duval, Don C.
Advisor(s)
Murray, Fiona
Date Issued
February 2025
Publisher
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Abstract
Over the past twenty years the global mining industry, like many established industrial sectors, is facing unprecedented pressure to find sustainable and creative methods to drive shareholder value, enhance productivity, manage geopolitical tensions, and improve the health and well-being of their workforce and the communities in which they operate. To overcome these challenges, leaders have embarked upon a journey of technological transformation – one rooted in deploying emerging technologies to solve the sector's most intractable challenges. It is also on a journey of organizational transformation - shifting technological development away from internal R&D towards engaging and forming partnerships with start-ups, small and medium size enterprises (SME’s), and an array of other innovation ecosystem intermediaries. Simple to describe in theory, in practice, many mining corporations have struggled in this transition. Based on a decade of research, interviews, and survey data from hundreds of mining industry stakeholders and years teaching corporate executives, this analysis suggests that a significant problem lies in the frictions that mining companies face when it comes to identifying, procuring, and subsequently adopting and deploying emerging technology solutions. Through this research, I have determined that one of the key missing ingredients has been large-scale test-bed facilities: real-world, operating mine environments where global corporations and technology innovators can meet, test, and demonstrate the potential of emerging technologies. Much akin to a hospital for clinical trials, or a field-trial for defense technologies, underground mining centers provide a venue to de-risk new technologies and expedite transformational change. An operating mine – re-purposed to serve as a technology development, testing, and demonstration center – has the potential to significantly overcome many of the challenges otherwise associated with the need for real-world data generation and testing that can demonstrate efficacy and enable partnerships. Taking one such center as an example - NORCAT - I elaborate on the elements of the Center that have driven success, and generalize these insights for other capital-intensive, highly regulated, and risk-averse sectors such as healthcare, aerospace and defense.
MIT Department
System Design and Management Program.
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