Precompetitive critical mineral geoscience
Page last updated:19 October 2026
Precompetitive geoscience is government-funded, foundational geoscience information and data, collected and made publicly available before commercial exploration or development, to support informed decisions by industry, government and communities. It includes geological mapping, geophysical surveys, geochemistry, drilling information, elevation and seabed data, groundwater systems information, and many other datasets that help describe the continent of Australia and its surrounding marine areas. The data and information derived from these activities is provided free of charge.
Resourcing Australia’s Prosperity
Resourcing Australia’s Prosperity is the Australian Government’s 35-year, $3.4 billion flagship precompetitive geoscience initiative. The initiative will play a key role in unlocking new opportunities to spur exploration, investment and the development of Australia’s natural resources.
Resourcing Australia’s Prosperity will drive economic growth and create jobs in the global shift to a net zero economy. By partnering with state and territory governments and our research partners, this initiative also lays the groundwork for a prosperous, competitive and sustainable future.
After extensive consultations with stakeholders across government, industry, academia and service providers, the Australian Government published the initial 10-year roadmap for the Resourcing Australia’s Prosperity initiative, which provides the strategic direction for the first phase of the initiative.
Over the next decade (2024–34), Geoscience Australia will deliver Resourcing Australia’s Prosperity through 4 interrelated components:
- Australia-wide geoscience provides national geoscientific mapping, data and interpretive products to better understand what lies on and beneath the land surface and seabed.
- National resource assessments will evaluate for potential critical minerals, strategic materials, groundwater, natural hydrogen, underground hydrogen storage, geological storage of carbon dioxide and potential for offshore renewable energy infrastructure. Future releases include the national hydrogen hub storage assessment and the national carbon dioxide storage resource atlas.
- Delivery, awareness raising and engagement will foster collaborative relationships and deliver data, information, and tools to support improved decision-making by government, industry, and communities.
- Deep dives are detailed, multi-commodity assessments that aim to enhance our understanding of resource prospectivity in selected onshore regions.
Critical Minerals Mapping Initiative
The Critical Minerals Mapping Initiative (CMMI) brings together Geoscience Australia, the Geological Survey of Canada and the United States Geological Survey. By combining their geoscience expertise, the partners aim to address vulnerabilities in global natural resource supply, identify emerging opportunities across the resources sector, and support critical mineral discoveries in Australia, Canada and the United States. By endorsing CMMI, the federal governments of Australia, Canada and the United States collectively recognise the importance of critical minerals and support expanding and diversifying critical mineral supply chains.
CMMI aims to build a diversified critical minerals industry in all three countries through developing a better understanding of:
- known critical mineral resources
- geologic controls on critical mineral distribution for deposits currently producing by-products
- identification of new sources of supply through critical mineral potential mapping and quantitative mineral assessments.
Through its free interactive CMMI Portal, CMMI brings together global critical minerals information, including more than 25,000 mineral samples from historical and modern mining operations across 60 countries. The partners update the portal as new data and publications becomes available.
Building on the world’s largest compilation of critical minerals in ores, CMMI released the Critical Minerals in Ores – Mineral Chemistry database (CMiO-MIN) in August 2026. The release adds approximately 13,000 data points from ore-related mineral samples collected from deposits around the world. The data is publicly available in a standardised format through the CMMI portal.
CMiO-MIN brings together compositional data from mineralised core intervals, surface samples and mine waste materials. It builds on the existing Critical Minerals in Ores database by linking chemistry data with sample characteristics and deposit classifications.
Critical Metals for Critical Industries CRC
The Critical Metals for Critical Industries Cooperative Research Centre (CMCI CRC) is targeting its research in high-value minerals, breakthrough technologies and sustainable refining methods – creating new job and export opportunities and lifting Australia's processing for our world-class resources supply.
Through its participation in the CMCI CRC, Geoscience Australia is providing nationally significant geoscience, to support critical minerals discovery, processing, value-chain development and informed investment decisions. Our involvement helps strengthen Australia's sovereign capability, supply chain resilience and transition towards higher-value critical minerals processing and manufacturing.
Exploring for the Future
The Australian Government’s $225 million Exploring for the Future program (2016-24), led by Geoscience Australia, committed to supporting a strong economy, resilient society and sustainable environment for the benefit of Australians.
At its heart, the program was about contributing to a sustainable, long-term future for Australia through an improved understanding of the nation’s mineral and energy potential and groundwater resources.
By gathering and analysing geological and geophysical data and making the results publicly available, the program supported regional development and informed decision making across Australia, resulting in jobs and growth.
The 2020–2024 program focused on eight interrelated projects, united in growing our understanding of subsurface geology. Three of these projects had an application to critical minerals:
- Australia’s Resources Framework Australia’s as a continental-scale project
- Darling-Curnamona-Delamerian as a regional-scale deep-dive project across western New South Wales and Victoria, eastern South Australia, and northwest Tasmania
- Barkly-Isa-Georgetown as a regional-scale deep-dive project between Tennant Creek in the Northern Territory, through to Mount Isa and Georgetown in Queensland.
Read the overview of activities, results, achievements and impacts from the Exploring for the Future program in the Program Summary Report.
Australian Critical Minerals Research and Development Hub
The Australian Critical Minerals Research and Development Hub (2022-2026) was hosted by the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) and brought together expertise from leading federal science agencies: the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO) and Geoscience Australia.
The R&D Hub worked with industry to address technical challenges and drive collaborative research across the critical minerals value chain needed to support clean energy and Australia’s net zero policy agenda.
The top priorities of the R&D Hub were to:
- scale-up and commercialise critical minerals research and development – including priority research projects on supply chains of strategic significance
- help coordinate, guide and prioritise critical minerals research and development efforts across Australia
- connect critical minerals projects to the technical and research expertise they need
- support strategic international critical minerals collaboration and science diplomacy.
Find out more about Geoscience Australia’s projects that were funded through the Australian Critical Minerals R&D Hub.
Learn about the Australian Critical Minerals Research & Development Hub’s exceptional contribution to Australia’s precompetitive geoscience from 2022 to 2026, including innovation and collaboration in securing Australia’s critical minerals future.