Monitoring System of rock stability in mines

New approach to seismic monitoring system will make mining safer.

Monitoring System of rock stability in mines based on Advanced 4D seismic analysis. Ground collapse during mining operations can be devastating, for both miners and the industry. Advanced detection tools will help avoid this worst-case scenario.

The EU-supported Mines-In-Time project hopes to prevent such events by monitoring the rock mass during mining activities and predicting ground collapse. Alterations in the state of the rock can be used to forecast overall rock stability, predicting potential collapse.

MIT is a service developed by SpacEarth Technology (SET) for monitoring the rock mass stress alteration during mining operations, in almost real time. It is built on a more advanced 4D LET algorithm, which encompasses the additional dimension of time. The system is able to detect and analyse microseismic activity resulting from mining or other industrial operations.

Integrated solution

The project’s algorithm distinguishes between natural and man-made microseismic activity, caused by drilling or other common mining activities. MIT computes a 4D numerical model of the rock elasticity for a target volume of the mine. No specialised hardware is needed as the software can be easily integrated into any decision support system, a tool used in mine management which runs on a traffic-light safety system.