ABSTRACT
Mining geotechnics, a discipline at the intersection of geology, geophysics and geomechanics, is a formidable opportunity for geostatistics: almost everything remains to be done. This chapter presents geostatistical studies of the discontinuity intensity; the linear fracture frequency; the rock quality designation and the link between these last two directional and nonadditive variables. It focuses on the concept of directionality and provides what is likely to be the ultimate solution to this problem: a regionalization of directional variables in a 5D spatioangular space. Most of published geostatistical works applied to the study of rock mass fracturing involve the modeling of ‘discontinuities’ – a generic term to designate rock ruptures with or without displacement, such as faults, fractures, joints, veins, fissures – and the simulation of discontinuity networks. The discontinuity intensity is an exceptional case in mining geotechnics, as this variable is additive and can be interpolated by kriging or conditional simulation techniques without any difficulty.
