SRK's William Joughin on dealing with uncertainty and risk in rock engineering design.
Managing risk in underground mines would benefit from the risk-based design, an approach that presents advantages over the commonly used 'factor of safety' method. SRK says it has developed an approach to underground geotechnical design that strikes a balance between cost and risk while remaining aligned with the move towards zero harm.
Speaking recently at a number of international and local conferences related to rock mechanics, SRK Consulting chairman and principal mining geotechnical engineer, William Joughin, argued for a risk-based approach to rock engineering design in underground mines – taking into account the natural variability in the rock mass conditions and geotechnical uncertainty. These uncertainties include measurement errors, insufficient data, sampling bias, stress state uncertainty and model uncertainty.
