Geonex
Why mining and quarry operations need field-first mapping
A mine or quarry site changes every day. Benches advance, stockpiles grow and shrink, haul roads get rerouted around active blasting zones, and safety berms move as the pit deepens. Static maps go stale almost as soon as they're printed, and waiting for a full survey crew with a total station to update every change is rarely practical for the day-to-day decisions a site has to make. Geonex gives mine surveyors, site engineers, and supervisors a way to capture accurate, coordinate-based geometry themselves, on the spot, using a device they already carry.
Because every point, line and polygon in Geonex carries real coordinates in your project's reference system — not just a dropped pin on a generic map — the data you collect on a phone is immediately usable in the same workflows your survey department already relies on, from volumetric estimates to compliance reporting.
Mapping pit boundaries and bench lines as they advance
As a pit or bench edge advances, walk or drive the new boundary and add vertices as you go; Geonex closes the polygon and reports its area the moment you finish. That number — a working estimate of advancement or remaining reserve footprint — is available on-screen before you've left the bench, long before a formal survey update would reach the planning office. Because the coordinate system is set once for the whole project, every boundary you capture lines up with previous surveys without manual reconciliation.
Haul roads, access routes and distance to the crusher
Haul road layout directly affects cycle times and fuel cost, and Geonex's line and distance tools make it easy to check a route without instrumenting a truck. Select points along a proposed or existing haul road and the app reports the length of each segment plus the running total — useful for comparing a new route against the current one, or for confirming a route meets minimum turning-radius or grade-change spacing before equipment is committed to it.
Stockpile footprints and area tracking over time
While Geonex doesn't replace drone-based volumetric surveys for precise stockpile tonnage, walking a stockpile's base as a polygon gives an immediate, repeatable footprint-area figure that's useful for day-to-day tracking between formal surveys — spotting a stockpile that's grown faster than expected, or confirming a pad hasn't encroached on a buffer zone. Save the same stockpile as a new polygon each week and you have a simple, coordinate-accurate history of how its footprint has changed.
Coordinate conversion for permits, contractors and equipment vendors
Mine sites routinely need to hand off coordinates in a different system than the one used internally — to a permitting authority, a drilling contractor, or an equipment vendor staking out a new installation. Geonex's Transform tool converts coordinates between systems instantly, by hand or in a batch of up to 1,000 rows read straight from an Excel file, so you're not retyping coordinate lists or chasing down a desktop license just to hand off a few dozen points.
Keeping survey, planning and safety teams on the same layers
Mine sites usually involve several teams who all care about overlapping parts of the same geometry — survey, planning, safety, and often an environmental or compliance function. Geonex Pro's cloud layers let all of them work from the same live data: a survey technician updates a bench boundary in the morning, a planner checks remaining footprint at lunch, and a safety officer reviews a newly flagged hazard point that afternoon — without anyone emailing a shapefile around. Each layer's access can be set to read-only or edit per person, and every point or polygon can carry a photo, useful for documenting a hazard, a berm condition, or a boundary marker.
Exporting for compliance and reporting
Regulatory and internal reporting almost always wants data in a specific format. Any layer can be exported as a KML file for use in desktop GIS or as an Excel workbook with attributes intact — both shareable directly from the app, so a site engineer can send an updated boundary or haul-road dataset to the office the same day it's walked.
Logging hazards and safety points as the pit changes
A mine or quarry site's hazard picture shifts as fast as its geometry does — a new highwall crack, a berm that's lower than spec after recent traffic, standing water in a low bench after rain. Geonex lets a safety officer or supervisor record a hazard the same way they'd record any other point: tap to capture the exact coordinate, attach a photo, and note severity or required action in a custom field defined for that layer. Because the layer syncs to the cloud, the next shift sees the hazard on their map before they ever reach the location, rather than relying on a handoff conversation at shift change that may or may not happen in full.
Why a mine site team picks Geonex over a generic mapping app
Generic consumer map apps are built for finding an address, not for defining a layer schema, converting a coordinate system, or sharing editable geometry with a dedicated group of teammates. A desktop GIS package does all of that, but it isn't something a surveyor carries down into a pit or a supervisor pulls out mid-shift. Geonex sits in the gap between the two: field-ready like a phone app, but built around real coordinate systems, structured attribute data, and layer-level sharing the way a mine's existing GIS workflow already expects data to look.
Frequently asked questions from mining teams
Is Geonex a replacement for drone or LiDAR volumetric surveys?
No — Geonex is a field GIS and coordinate tool, not a volumetric survey platform. It's best used for footprint area, boundary tracking, haul-road geometry, and day-to-day coordinate capture between formal volumetric surveys.
Can different teams see different layers on the same site?
Yes. Each cloud layer is shared individually, so you can give a safety team access to hazard layers without necessarily sharing planning or reserve-boundary layers, and vice versa.
Does it work in areas with no mobile signal?
Local collection works fully offline, which covers most pit-floor and remote-site conditions. Cloud layers sync automatically once you're back in signal range.