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Make Underground Mining Safer Webinar

Make Underground Mining Safer Webinar

Do you want to learn how to identify catastrophic failures before they happen in underground mining?

The Canadian Institute of Mining, Metallurgy and Petroleum Society will host “Monitoring geotechnical risk in underground mining using satellite data“, presented by Dr. Jennifer Scoular and Martijn Houtepen, on November 16,  12-1pm EST

About the webinar:
Satellite remote sensing techniques are getting more widely-used in open pit mining, but are underutilized in underground mining. This might be because monitoring underground mining with sensors 600km above the earth seems counterintuitive.

There are, however, several interesting applications for using satellite monitoring at underground mining sites.

When effects of underground mining can be observed above ground, like subsidence, Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) satellite data can be used as a geotechnical monitoring tool.

This is done by mapping millimetric deformations of the earth’s surface via a technique called InSAR.

Mapped against a catalogue of failure mechanisms, these small deformations can act as precursor signals for catastrophic failures. Because the satellite has weekly revisit frequencies and worldwide coverage, InSAR can be used as a monitoring and alerting tool.

This webinar reviews case studies of using satellite deformation data (InSAR) for underground mining; both for active mines and during reconciliation.

Using InSAR monitoring greatly increases the detectability of failure precursor signals and should be part of each mine’s risk management toolbox.