| Popis: |
The demand for mineral products is doubling every 30 to 40 years. With a growing world population, mineral product supply must keep up with the demand because of industrialization, urbanization, and internationalization. With an increase in mining activities and falling mineral grades, more waste production is inevitable. This issue poses tremendous challenges to the world and its people, and efficient storage and management of waste material associated with mineral tailings are considered as part of the global re-imagination of mining waste projects. It is common practice to store the mineral waste in impounding structures called ‘tailing dams’ to manage toxic waste concentrations and acid mine drainage. During the last few decades, the frequency of tailings dam disasters has increased, giving rise to global concern about safety, sustainability, management, and monitoring of Tailing Storage Facilities (TSFs). World-leading sustainable development organizations like ICMM, UNEP, and ICOLD have developed guidelines and policies for efficient management of TSFs. However, with the advancement of new technologies and packaging these within a system or integrated approach, there is a need to design a concise and explicit framework for the efficient monitoring of TSFs as part of a risk management strategy. This research is aimed at formulating a conceptual framework for near real-time monitoring using advanced geospatial technologies, remote sensing, on-site instrumentation, and their integration with the GIS-based system. Such a smart GIS system will assist stakeholders, mine operators and engineers to remotely sense and control the potential failure of TSF, to understand its causes and estimate the consequences of failure. |
