International mining officials say the coronavirus crisis has led to increased automation in the industry. The changes are likely to lead to lower costs and smaller, cleaner mines where more can be done with fewer people, the officials said. Industry leaders spoke about the issue at the Imarc mining conference in the southeastern Australian city of Melbourne. Conference attendee Suresh Vadnagra is the chief technology officer for Newcrest, one of the world’s largest gold-mining companies. “The pandemic has forced us to think about how we can do more of the work that had to happen on site, remotely. And how we do those tasks with less people,” he said. An increasing number of companies are looking at ways to better use machines and “big data” to improve their business operations, Vadnagra added. Big data is a term for very large amounts of information produced by people using the internet.