Abstract:

Giant Mine (Giant) in the city of Yellowknife, Northwest Territories, Canada, had a long history of mining in arsenic laden gold deposits and has a long future of remediation. Since 2018, Giant has been using mixed reality to show 3-dimensional (3D) visualizations of the mine’s current reality, conceptual designs, and future landscapes. This paper showcases the evolution of project requirements from communicating ideas to engineers, to engineers conveying these ideas to community members, to community relations teams liaising with various communities and sharing oral history. Like peeling layers from an onion, each stage shows a little bit more of the project needs: from basic engineering and geographic datasets, to engineering ideas and conceptual designs, to detailed designs and explaining processes, and, finally, to adding details to deepen conversations. Throughout the past six years, the goal has been to create a space for curiosity and conversation, creating trust, then strengthening it. Within this process, we deepen our understanding of how engineering designs are only a part of the puzzle. The feedback and guidance from rights holders and interested parties provide the backbone to better designs and remove obstacles to meaningful collaboration. This paper uses Giant as a case study to walk the reader through time using mixed reality for mine remediation to identify the needs of current and future users, while strengthening relationships between rights holders and stakeholders to create a better process for mine remediation.

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Gerald Magnusson