I'm researching the .grd file format and its not clear to me why they are used, especially regarding the mining and construction industries. I understand they demonstrate changes in elevation or other geographic attributes in a binary format.
What analytical operations are .grd files used for in the mining and construction industry?
.grd files are sometimes used for geoid model files. A geoid model contains offsets between a geopotential surface and the ellipsoid model of the Earth. GNSS (GPS, GLONASS, Beidou, etc.) natively return heights above the ellipsoid surface. These are not always useful as they do not reflect which direction water will flow 'downhill'.
The geopotential surface of a geoid model is approximately equal to mean sea level as IF there was no topography. I've seen it described as there are tunnels connecting the oceans and allowing the water to freely flow.
Anyway, people often prefer elevations, heights above the geoid or another gravity-related surface as many vertical coordinate reference systems are like NAVD88 (USA), NAP (Netherlands), etc.
There are a few different grid file formats, using .grd as extension. see qgis, Saga GIS, grdpaste, FiniteMap, etc.. It could be also an Adobe Photoshop Gradient file.
see the following tutorials for saga gis, for why this industries use grids noise, hydrology and morphometry/slope, etc..
Having worked as geophysicist in the mining industry myself at the former Rio Tinto office in Newbury UK, I can answer your question. The .grd grids are binary grids for storing gridded magnetic and gravity observations. They are used to map the distribution of iron and dense rocks, and as such to find new mineral deposits.
The .grd data format in this case are geosoft grids.
