Siamese network based prospecting prediction method: A case study from the Au deposit in the Chongli mineral concentrate area in Zhangjiakou, Hebei Province, China

Supervised neural networks constitute an important research area for the intelligent prediction of locations for prospecting mineral deposits. Accurate training of a supervised neural network requires many training samples, something that is often difficult to obtain. This paper reports the use of geological, geochemical, and geophysical data by a Siamese network to overcome the problem of insufficient training samples, and implements a supervised deep learning prospecting prediction method based on the Siamese network. Intelligent prediction for gold deposits prospecting is carried out for the Chongli mineral concentrate area in Zhangjiakou, Hebei Province, China, and compared with the weight of evidence method and convolutional neural network model. The results show that:(a) the performance of the Siamese network model is no less than that of the convolutional neural network (CNN) model and better than that of the weight of evidence (WOE) method; (b) the gold prospective areas differentiated by the established models are strongly consistent with geological and metallogenic characteristics in the study area. This study suggests Siamese network model as an effective mineral prospectivity modeling tool. This method is also suitable for prospecting prediction using geoscience data in other areas.