Renewed global concern about the risks of tailings dam failure is accelerating a revolution in the use of automated sensors to generate big, real-time data to better monitor and manage these facilities, according to SRK Consulting.
“The need for knowing more about tailings dam conditions – and in real time – has become a major focus within the mining sector, demanding a step change in the way we collect, process and interpret data,” Lyzandra Boshoff, Principal Engineering Geologist at SRK Consulting, said. “As part of these efforts, SRK has been rolling out initiatives using automated vibrating wire piezometers (VWPs) on tailings facilities.”
Boshoff highlighted the particular significance of seepage and the associated pore pressure regime within a tailings facility as a vital aspect of the integrity and stability of the structure. This has conventionally been tracked by manual standpipe piezometers whose performance, while accurate, depends on the quality of installation and aftercare, she said. And, of course, manual data collection is subject to human error.
“This means expending considerable effort for relatively little data, which may often not exactly reflect the current situation by the time the information reaches the engineer for analysis,” she said. “Even the automated sensors using vibrating wire technology tended to rely on manual data collection from the logging devices connected to the sensors.”
This is now changing as many telemetry hardware developers have improved their wireless capability and cloud technology to upload and store data, allowing data to be immediately accessed by engineers and management.
“This has changed the landscape of data flow and interpretation, as well as the potential size of the datasets that can be generated,” she said. “SRK has been at the forefront of rolling out automated VWP networks, using logging systems that can send data wirelessly to cloud-based databases and can then be visualised and analysed in real time.”
