EU-Raw Materials intelligence Capacity Platform (EU-RMCP) – technical system specification :

The MICA Expert System is currently being developed in the frame of the H2020 MICA project; more precisely within its work package 6 entitled ‘The European Raw Materials Intelligence Capacity Platform (EU-RMICP)’ whose partners are BRGM, GeoZS, GEUS, GTK, JRC, LIG (Laboratoire d’Informatique de Grenoble) and NERC (BGS). The description of the project can be found on the project website (www.mica-project.eu/). To briefly summarize: MICA (Mineral Intelligence Capacity Analysis – 2015-2017) has among its objectives to develop a platform of knowledge, the EU-Raw Materials Intelligence Capacity Platform (or EU-RMICP), integrating metadata on data sources related to primary and secondary mineral resources and bringing the end users with an expertise on the methods and tools used in mineral intelligence. In practice, the system should be capable of bringing relevant ‘answers’ of the type 'how to proceed for …' on almost any question related to min-eral resources, on the whole supply chain, from prospecting to recycling, taking into account the environmental, political and social dimensions. To meet this challenge, the EU-RMICP is based on an ontology of the domain of mineral resources (coupled with more generic cross-functional ontologies, relative to commodities, time and space), which represents the domain of the questions of the users (experts and non-experts). The user navigates in the ontology by using a Dynamic Graph of Decision (DDG), which allows him/her to discover the solutions which he/she is looking for without having to formulate any question. The system is coupled with a 'RDF Triple Store' (a data-base storing the ontologies), factSheets, docSheets and flowSheets (i.e., specific formatted forms) related to methods and documentation, scenarios and metadata. This particularly innovative system can be widened (perimeter or scope and granularity) and represents now a prototype of a modern expert system. In practice, this system will be connected with the existing Knowledge Data Platforms (KDPs), e.g. the IKMS (EURare), the EU-MKDP (Minerals4EU), the EU-UMKDP (ProSUM), the EU-CRMKDP (SCRREEN), the European Geological Data Infrastructure (EGDI) developed by EuroGeoSurveys (EGS) and the RMIS 2.0 (Raw Materials Information System) which is currently being developed by the European Commission DG JRC in Ispra, allowing all these KDPs to enable their users from benefitting of the Expert System.