Abstract:

In late 2020, Vale assembled a team to look at the management of mine seismicity and review technology development initiatives that would link to a seismicity management technology roadmap. One part of this initiative included the development of an exposure wheel for both the development and production cycles. Incident history suggested that the development cycle was the immediate priority. The development exposure wheel was divided into six discrete activities (drilling, loading/blasting, mucking, back/sidewall bolting, face bolting and secondary support) with the goal of looking at sub-tasks for each activity and visually estimating the degree of operator exposure.

This work was followed by two technology roadmap development initiatives, one focusing on seismic risk mitigation and another looking at technologies to assist in moving operators away from seismic hazard. The second initiative will be the focus of this paper and the authors will describe the roadmap development and associated projects that are part of the moving operators away from seismic hazard program. The suite of roadmap projects includes both the development of new technology and the trialing of available equipment options that contribute to the reduction of operator exposure.

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Dhrumit Pandit