R&D project with UDMN

4D real-time geotechnical hazard assessment and reporting

Ultra-deep mining under high stress carries severe rockbursting and other geotechnical risk, endangering personnel, equipment, and production. Mitigation of geotechnical risk requires rapid assessment of hazards as they are evolving and practical decision support tools for their management.

We have been awarded a major R&D project from the Ultra Deep Mining Network (UDMN) called “4D Real-Time Geotechnical Hazard Assessment and Reporting”. We will develop a system that builds directly upon a number of recent advances in data management, modelling, and risk computation – the three key technologies that must come together in a single system for real-time geotechnical hazard assessment.

The problem of geotechnical hazard assessment is amenable to risk identification methods developed recently in the field of “predictive analytics”, currently one of the most research-intensive areas in computational science. Through the UDMN project we will bring the power of predictive analytics to geotechnical hazard assessment.

We will also develop the capability of maintaining continuously updated “living” rock mass and mine models. Hazard assessments will be automatically updated as the underlying model of the mine evolves, providing real-time calibration and hazard estimation. The continuously updated mine and hazard models, and their underlying primary data, will be managed by Geoscience INTEGRATOR, our 4D geoscientific data management system.

A project deliverable is an operational real-time hazard monitoring and reporting system at Glencore’s Nickel Rim South Mine in Sudbury, Ontario.

This will form an important part of our commercial offering of geotechnical hazard assessment solutions starting mid-2016.