A dissertation submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Masters of Science in Engineering to the Faculty of Engineering and the Built Environment, University of the Witwatersrand, 2017The localized uniform conditioning (LUC) technique converts conventional Uniform Conditioning (UC) grade-tonnage curves into single grade values attached to each smallest mining unit (SMU). This is achieved by ranking the SMUs within a panel in increasing order of their grade based on the local grade patterns predicted by direct kriging of the SMUs. However, the quality of this localization process will depend heavily on the validity of the predicted grade patterns. A study was undertaken to determine how valid the predicted grade patterns of a typical Birimian-style gold deposit (with high nugget effect and strong short-range variability) might be expected to be. The direct SMU kriging rankings (based on sparse data) were compared with the grade control model ranking (based on close-spaced data and the best available estimate of the deposit). The results showed a satisfactory correlation and relationship between these rankings. It was concluded that the application of the LUC technique is still useful and appropriate for this style of deposit.XL201
