Since 2012, SRK has been working with a major North American producer of agricultural nutrients that owns and operates production facilities in Canada and the United States. SRK has been helping the company’s Mine Engineering department to expand their rock mechanics program, with a focus on collecting data to aid decision making for daily operational and long-term mine planning.
Because data management and collection methods are integral to this program, SRK has created a centralised database to store the rock mechanics data collected by instruments installed around the mine. This centralised database enables rock mechanics engineers to access the data more quickly and efficiently than if it was dispersed across the instruments that collected it. SRK has also developed a front-end application that queries the data and makes it easy to produce charts that support daily operational decision making.
To save time with data entry, SRK has implemented the Environmental Systems Research Institute’s Collector for ArcGIS application. Running on a tablet, this app allows users to record data electronically from rock mechanics instruments located underground, saving office time for data analysis and review. It also enables instrument locations to be represented spatially on a mine plan, making it easy for users to refer to the data collected for each area of the mine. Furthermore, SRK has set up the app to enable users to map geological features directly on a tablet while underground. By eliminating the need for geologists to convert hand-drawn maps into digital maps, they have more time for carefully interpreting the data in the office.
