A Digital Twin for Water

Water and Digital Twins — Did You Know?

1. Around 50–55% of upstream copper production sits in jurisdictions facing high or extreme water stress.
2. A study of six of the largest global miners found 70% of their operations are in water-stressed regions.
3. Escondida has run on 100% desalinated seawater since 2020, pumped inland and uphill from the coast.
4. A Site Wide Water Balance reconciles dewatering, seepage, evaporation, tailings and rainfall. A twin keeps it live.
5. Evaporation and seepage, the softest numbers in a water balance, become measurable once satellite, UAV and ground sensing are fused.

The model was always a snapshot

The problem is not the model – it is the lag. Every copper mine has a site-wide water balance, rebuilt periodically from separate hydrology, tailings, processing and climate systems that do not talk to each other. By the time it reconciles, the season has moved. A twin closes the gap: sensors feed a live model, and the forecast changes today’s pumping and discharge decisions.

Water doesn’t respect a lease boundary

A twin is only as good as its catchment. BHP has committed to establishing, with others, a regional water data-sharing solution for catchment-scale planning in the Pilbara, including an integrated groundwater database. Water does not respect a lease boundary, so neither can the model.

Innovation Spotlight — From Sensor to Catchment

Horizon 1 Available

• The data layer is in place: IoT flow, level, seepage and pore-pressure networks feeding dashboards with automated thresholds and trend analytics.
• Process twins already pay: thickener and tailings twins that hold the right sediment inventory recover more water for reuse and lift concentrator throughput.
• Twins are in production at scale: BHP runs digital twins at Escondida, Copper South Australia and BMA to predict performance and find debottlenecking opportunities.

Horizon 2 Evolving

• Site-wide water twins: coupling hydrology, tailings, processing and climate into one live model, so scenario testing replaces periodic reconciliation.
• Tailings dam twins: satellite radar and machine learning combined into early-warning twins for storage facility stability.
• Twins as licence evidence: dynamic water balance models used to demonstrate control and forecast discharge to regulators and communities.

Horizon 3 Emerging

• Catchment-scale twins: shared basin models across operators, regulators and communities – water managed beyond the lease boundary.
• Environmental digital twins: CSIRO’s Digital Water and Landscapes work is applying deep learning to hydrological prediction in data-sparse catchments.
• Closing the loop: twins that adjust pumping, storage and treatment automatically against forecast climate, demand and energy price.

Who Is Solving It?