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How We Think
The VSKY.GEO Insight Library
Independent thinking on geotechnical judgement, uncertainty, model credibility and difficult mining decisions.
These short essays explore how technical evidence is interpreted and challenged, where confidence can become misplaced, and how models, governance and emerging technology influence decisions in practice.
0. Prologue — Geotechnical Zugzwang
In chess, zugzwang describes a position where you have to move, even though every available move makes your position worse.
Mining has its own version of zugzwang. A geotechnical risk is often recognized only after the mine has already made the decisions that determine how much freedom remains to respond. Slope angles have been committed, infrastructure placed, sequencing optimized, and capital spent.
The ground then behaves differently or new information changes our understanding. At that point, the problem is not simply that uncertainty remains. You may no longer have enough time to learn what you need to know and still implement the preferred response.
1. FOUNDATIONS OF MINING GEOTECHNICS
Explore why geotechnical engineering is fundamental to mine design, risk management and value creation across the mining lifecycle.
The relationship between geotechnical engineering, geomechanics and rock engineering, and why the terminology matters less than the engineering function itself.
Why geotechnical engineering is ultimately a discipline of judgement under incomplete knowledge.
2. UNCERTAINTY, MODELS & ENGINEERING CONFIDENCE
Three concepts that are often blurred in practice and why that weakens critical decisions.
Software access can create a subtle illusion: that because a model is now easier to build, it is also easier to believe.
Models that appear more certain than the evidence behind them and why that can distort critical decisions.
Composite geotechnical confidence and reliability metrics are useful only as aids to judgement, but can be dangerous if misused.
3. Risk, Value & Decision Governance
Why mine value is often won or lost in early design assumptions, slope angles, and stope geometry.
Why failures often persist not because of missing analysis, but because of weak interpretation, governance, and response discipline.
In mining, geotechnical risk is not controlled by better models alone, but by the strength of the decision system around them.
Why distance can improve judgement when the decision matters more than physical proximity.
4. From Models to Decision Systems
Why most mining twins are still models or shadows, and what makes a true twin decision-relevant.
The real difficulty lies not in total automation, but in knowing precisely where to halt software control and apply expert human insight.
A glimpse on how AI could shift geotechnical modelling from calibrating a single preferred model toward testing competing interpretations of observed ground behaviour.
Signal vs noise in mine geotechnical engineering: how monitoring evidence gains significance through mechanism, scale, consequence and decision context.
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