Sharla Coetsee Reutech Mining, South Africa
Establishment and Maintenance of a Successful Pit Slope Monitoring Database
Slope performance monitoring is integral for ensuring safe operational conditions during mining activities, and for gauging the efficacy of the slope design applied. There are a number of sensors that contribute to a slope monitoring program, for which the focus herein is ground-based and real aperture radars (GBR, RAR) and specifically, the establishment and maintenance of databases/datasets captured by this type of equipment.
Whilst directly applicable to Reutech Mining’s movement and surveying radars (MSR), these steps are also valid for other service providers, and the theory and checklists can be adjusted to cater for mining GBR systems.
The maintenance of these databases are the foundation for obtaining reliable and accurate radar monitoring data. A number of alarm exceedance warnings may be applied in order to provide advance warning of pit slope conditions which may be indicative of both anticipated deformation and the forewarning of unexpected and unforeseen events. ‘It is these events that can have serious implications in terms of loss of life, serious injury or disruption to mining activities’ (Sharon & Eberhardt 2020). The onus is on us as geotechnical practitioners to ensure that we are not unaware, nor caught off-guard, and that we are well equipped and prepared to manage such eventualities.
Whilst having employed various sensors to collect data, the instrumentation (and its collected data) must be well understood. The intrinsic parameters regarding range, resolution, accuracy, precision, conformance, robustness and reliability are best described as being ‘synonymous with ensuring confidence in data, poor quality or inaccurate data can be misleading and may be worse than having no data at all.’ (Sharon 2020).
One must also be cognisant of the fundamental principles of the alarming capability and assessment tools provided via the software interface, which is typically under continuous development/improvement by the radar service provider (this entails both the physical interface itself and the code which deals directly with the management of the interpretation of measured interferometric phase and the removal of refractive index (RI) which is representative of atmospheric conditions).
