Open database on global coal and metal mining

The FINEPRINT project launches a new major data product, the open database on global coal and metal mining.

This open database provides a comprehensive collection of mining data, primarily covering physical production data of coal and metal ores on an individual mine level. It includes 1435 individual mines, smelters and mineral refineries, mine-level production for 80 different materials, in the period 2000-2021. Furthermore, it also includes data on mining coordinates, ownership, mineral reserves, mining waste, transportation of mining products, as well as on mineral processing capacities and production.

This data product is based on manually gathered information from more than 2000 freely available mining company reports. Every data point is linked to its source document, ensuring full transparency. Find more information about this new data product at www.fineprint.global/resources/mining-database.

The data set is visualised on our FINEPRINT Viewer (select “Database on global coal and metal mining”), featuring a global interactive map and sub-sites for each single mine: www.fineprint.global/visualisations/viewer.

The respective data descriptor paper is currently in review in Nature Scientific Data. The relational database will be available on Zenodo, once the paper has been published.