News
Australia’s ASTER mineral maps impact study
October 2025
In 2012, CSIRO published a series of mineral maps for Australia, which were processed from the Japanese Space Systems’ Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection radiometer (ASTER) – a mineral-tuned multispectral satellite sensor on NASA’s Terra platform. Recently, RTI International conducted an impact study of CSIRO’s ASTER mineral maps, which indicates that the minerals industry in Australia has realised $639 million (in 2024 AUD) in benefits since 2012, with real costs of only $1.76 million (adjusted to 2024 AUD). This provides a benefit-cost ratio of 363, meaning every dollar invested by the Australian government returned $363.
The full report can be accessed from here.
Executive Summary
In 2024 the mining industry represented the largest share of gross value added (GVA) in the economy, accounting for 12.2% of GVA (Australian bureau of Statistics, 2024). This was up from just 4.6% share of GVA in 2000. Australia’s mineral resources industry is important both domestically and globally because Australia is one of the biggest mineral exporters in the world. In 2023, mineral products accounted for $254 billion of Australia’s $386 billion total goods exports, or about 2/3 of all exported goods (Observatory of Economic Complexity (OEC), 2025). Australia is one of the most important mineral resource suppliers in the world, ranking first globally in bauxite, iron ore, lithium and rutile production, as well as first in gold, iron ore, lead, rutile, uranium, zinc and zircon resources (Hughes, 2025). These minerals are important inputs for many key industries that power economies across the globe.
Australia has vast mineral wealth, but understanding landscape of mineral resources was key to unlocking the potential economic value. One tool that was important to facilitate the success of the mineral resource industry was access to earth observation imagery (EOI). EOI provides crucial information for the mineral resources industry across the whole mine life value chain, from “greenfields” exploration and base line monitoring to mine site monitoring and remediation. For the mining industry, EOI mainly includes raw satellite imagery of surface geology and biology, and the resulting imagery and maps developed by spectral geologists and geophysicists that can be utilised by industry stakeholders.
The most common use for Earth observation imagery (EOI) in the mining industry is as a tool for site selection (i.e. mineral exploration). In mineral exploration, EOI is complemented with geochemical and geophysical campaigns, supported by publicly available geoscience data sets, provided by, for example, geological surveys. In the 2000’s there were several challenges that limited the usefulness of EOI for companies in Australia. One challenge was the lack of consistency in satellite imagery and mineral maps throughout the country because the raw satellite imagery was not properly corrected for issues such as instrumentation differences, different atmospheric conditions and unique landscape features. The other challenge was that there was a new industry of consultants who produced imagery and maps for the mining industry that had no consistent standards or baseline of knowledge; products were of varying quality leading to a lack of confidence throughout the industry.
In response to the issues with the quality of EOI at the time, the CSIRO partnered with Geoscience Australia and the Australian State and Territory geological surveys to develop a comprehensive set of satellite mosaicss and mineral maps for the entire country. To develop these maps, CSIRO obtained a comprehensive data set of ~35,000 satellite sensor scenes from 10 years of archival data over Australia from The Advanced Space borne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER), a Japanese imaging instrument on NASA’s Terra satellite (CSIRO, 2025).
The first wave of ASTER mineral maps were released to the public in 2012 (CSIRO, 2025) and are publicly available. Initially industry showed a high level of interest in the maps as they were downloaded over 40,000 times in the first three months. The outcome of CSIRO’s ASTER mineral map work was a suite of EOI-derived mineral maps that was widely used by the mining industry in Australia since its creation in 2012. Over the last 12 years the ASTER mineral maps have had a dramatic impact on the mineral mining industry. The ASTER mineral maps are still widely accepted by industry as the default tool for mapping in the early project exploration phase.
The purpose of this study Is to evaluate the impacts of CSIRO’s ASTER mineral maps, including a CBA of the quantitative social benefits of these tools and a discussion of the qualitative benefits. This report uses interviews with industry experts and secondary research from literature on the social benefits of earth observation data in the mining industry to describe the potential economic benefits under three scenarios based on the impact of the services. The overall goal is to provide an assessment of how the ASTER mineral maps have generated social value for Australians over the previous 13-year period from their release in 2012 through 2024.
CSIRO’s development of the ASTER mineral maps have provided strong economic benefits for Australian residents. The use of EOI through the ASTER mineral maps not only improves the efficiency of the mining industry, but it also provides indirect impacts to industries with mineral inputs. Our study estimates that the mineral mining industry in Australia has realised $ 639 million (in 2024 AUD) in benefits since 2012, with real costs, adjusted to 2024 AUD, of only $1.76 million. This provides a BCR of 363, meaning every dollar invested by the Australian government returned $363.