SRK has been involved in flood risk reduction research for more than a decade. The principles and knowledge gained from this research were adapted for disaster risk assessment as well as the development of disaster risk reduction measures. The question now is if the methodologies developed for flood risk assessment and reduction measures can be applied to the management of the risk related to tailings.
The Disaster Management Act 57 of 2002 focuses on prevention of disaster risk, including mitigation and preparedness. Disaster risk is the expected loss when a hazardous event occurs, including lost lives, people injured, property damaged, and community livelihoods disrupted. Flood risk can be classified as the probability of occurrence, the extent of a possible incident, and the vulnerability of people, environment, infrastructure and economy.
A flood plain management plan includes a flood study and a flood plain management study that form the basis of flood risk reduction measures. Activities for flood plain management studies include cost-benefit analysis or multi-criteria decision assessment to determine the most cost-effective and appropriate combination of flood risk reduction measures.
The similarities in assessing TSF failure and flood risk include determining areas of inundation, assessing probabilities of various levels of inundation, identifying vulnerabilities, developing risk reduction measures and implementing measures with limited resources.
To prepare for an emergency response to TSF failures described in Principle 13 of GISTM include the principles of flood and disaster risk management. These principles include prevention and mitigation strategies that must form part of the Emergency Preparedness and Response Plan (EPRP). A similar methodology is used to develop these strategies as for flood risk reduction.
Based on the discussion regarding disaster risk assessment, a flood plain management plan and the similarities between tailing failure and flood risk, we can suggest the following for tailing risk reduction:
• determine an inundation area.
• identify communities, environment, infrastructure and economies at risk in the tailings inundation area.
• establish hazard zones created by velocity, depth of inundation and duration for each probability of inundation.
• link these hazard zones with vulnerability and capacity to cope to identify tailings risk zones.
• develop risk reduction plans for each identified risk zone.
• use multi-criteria decision methods to select the appropriate combination of risk reduction measures.
