Hybrid modeling to predict the economic feasibility of mining undiscovered porphyry copper deposits

► We use a hybrid approach to model economic feasibility of mining undiscovered mineral resources. ► Statistics of clustered self-organizing map neurons provide input to multiple linear regression technique. ► Independent verification indicates eighty-four percent of economic feasibility is correctly predicted. ► We demonstrate model application to a permissive copper porphyry tract crossing a portion of British Columbia and Yukon territories of Canada.