Slope monitoring and data visualisation state-of-the-art – advancing to Rio Tinto Iron Ore’s Mine of the Future™

Abstract

Rio Tinto Iron Ore's (RTIO) Western Australian mine operations comprises 14 mines with a centralised 'Mission Control' Operations Centre (OC) in Perth, and currently delivers 237 Mt/a ore from over 120 individual open pits. Operational challenges in terms of implementation of effective slope monitoring systems with appropriate visibility of system health and alarm notifications needed to be addressed. The geotechnical, management and support teams are site and Perth based, and all require access to geoscience monitoring data.Historically, each site had an independent monitoring and alarming systems. Transparency of monitoring data, health checks and alarming capabilities were limited. The lack of a system to display temporal geotechnical (slope performance), and hydrogeological monitoring data, with 24/7 alarm and system health status had been identified as a 'gap' following a previous slope instability incident at one of the Pilbara Operations.At project inception, the need for a visualisation and management tool which had a multidisciplinary focus and integrating georeferenced geoscience monitoring data with physical models in near real time, was identified. Consequently the Geoscience Monitoring Data System (GMDS) was developed to address three main requirements: Provide a consolidated overview of all geoscience monitoring data and physical models.  Show monitoring system and device health, and alarm status at a high level. Be integrated with existing slope performance and hazard management systems. This tool is in alignment with Rio Tinto's Mine of the Future and RTIO's Operations Centre vision by using technology to reduce costs, increase efficiency and improve health, safety and environmental performance. It provides the functionality to manage diverse instrumentation data in a consistent, standardised approach to support RTIO's geographically spread expansion plans.

Geotechnical data aggregation and visualisation supporting informed risk management: the one-stop geotech shop

“…The RTIO need for developing a geoscience monitoring visualisation and management tool where all geotechnical data is aggregated and can be visualised in a single platform, was described by de Graaf & Wessels (2013). At the time of development of the Geoscience Monitoring Data System (GMDS), no commercially available tool meeting all of RTIO's requirements existed.…”

Development and Application of 3D Hyperspectral Scanning System for Underground Mine and Tunnel Exploration

“…HE mine is a typical harsh workplace with a high demand for unmanned and automated operations. Thus, major mining companies in the United States of America (USA) and Australia are developing and applying smart mining technologies, including unmanned mines [1][2][3][4][5][6][7]. The main goal of smart mining is to minimize manpower input and improve profitability by utilizing unmanned vehicles and equipment for mining, transportation, drilling, and blasting.…”