By:

Mining Consultant

Boise, Idaho

July, 2001

Abstract: The use of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) as a powerful tool to analyze and display data is gathering momentum in the mining industry. Of particular interest is the capability of GIS to link spatial features and tabular data. This capability is here applied to a series of layers of a CAD drawing and associating a table of attributes to the various features of the drawing in an effort to consolidate both components into a useful tool for management.

This application of GIS in underground mining concentrates in four technical areas: land ownership and mineral claims, exploration management, production, and mine safety. The benefits of consolidating and archiving claim data and the ability to georeference property maps defined in local coordinates into state coordinate system is of paramount importance to a land and exploration manager. In the production area, GIS facilitates the optimal siting and querying of service installations relative to production centers to meet the production parameters. In mine safety, the siting of refuge chambers relative to production centers is optimized and areas of potential safety concern are identified utilizing GIS’s proximity analysis. The same applies to finding the shortest route to emergency exits and preparation of maps to facilitate the prompt evacuation of mine personnel.

Keywords: GIS, CAD, underground mining, mineral claims, exploration, production, mine safety.

Introduction: The use of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) in the natural resource industry is widely recognized; however, its use in technical applications in the mining industry is lagging behind other disciplines in the natural resource industry. The reason for this may be due to some extent to the popularity of CAD (Computer-Aided Drafting) and its interface with specialty mining software. The versatility of the DXF formatted files allows easy transfer of files between the two systems.

The increasing popularity and advances in the development of GIS in recent years introduces a new element in the above-mentioned relation, complementing the design capabilities of CAD with GIS’s robust link between spatial and tabular components (Figure 1). These features catapulted GIS as the preferred tool for planning and analysis, allowing the integration of communication across departmental, divisional, and corporate boundaries. This cross-boundary integration is undoubtedly the way present and future communications will flow in the mining industry as the commodities market, environmental regulations, and government policies force the mining companies to become more competitive and cost-effective. Moreover, the State and Federal agencies involved in the mine permitting process are adopting the GIS format as the standard for communicating spatial data.

The process of mine modeling and mine planning produces abundant maps and databases reflecting multiple scenarios. The planning engineer submits this information for the review of the engineering, exploration, mine operations, environmental, land, financial, legal, and management divisions (Figure 2). At this stage of the integration process, the specialty mining software ceases to be an effective tool leaving GIS as the ideal choice for a variety of planning and analysis scenarios across multiple disciplines.

The application of GIS in environmental, mine remediation, and reclamation has been extensively tested and documented. However, the same is not true in the area of technical mining applications. This paper describes examples of technical applications in underground mining concentrating in four areas: land ownership and mineral claims, exploration management, production, and mine safety. The examples presented here correspond to a mineral property located in Ouray County, Colorado. The spatial data was imported from AutoCADâ drawings using ESRI’s ArcView â GIS CAD Reader extension. All GIS applications outlined here were carried out using ESRI’s ArcView GISâ software

1. Land Ownership and Mineral Claims.

Land managers can benefit from GIS’s capabilities in tracking land leases, acquisitions, royalties, and mine expansions. The table of attributes has fields for claim number and description, owner’s name, category (patented , unpatented), royalty interest, survey control (name, coordinates, elevation, description of the monument), county zoning boundaries, township, range, and section boundaries, and corners, etc. (Figure 3).

The mineral claims can be classified and summarized by a field in its table of attributes (e.g. patented claims).The "summarize" command consolidates the claims by category, allowing the user to specify an attribute such as area for the summary by category. Another application of interest for the land manager is to determine which claims would be affected in a mine expansion. The user digitizes or imports the polygon outlining the expansion and use ArcViewâ ’s "Select by theme" capabilities to produce a map and table showing the claims affected by the expansion. Furthermore, these claims can be summarized by claim category, obtain statistics and prepare reports.

2. Exploration Management

For an exploration manager in the process of evaluating various mineral properties, GIS is a versatile tool for data consolidation, archiving, and quick access of information. In today’s global economy, a mineral exploration organization typically controls various mineral properties in various stages of development and scattered around the globe. The implementation of GIS allows the exploration manager to georeference these properties and tap into a wealth of information made public in the Internet, in the form of DEM (digital elevation models), DRG (Digital Rater Graphics), DLG (Digital Line Graph), coverages, orthoquads, etc. Typically, these mineral properties are defined in a local coordinate system; GIS enables the user to consolidate and georeference these properties into a world coordinate system.

The exploration manager can take advantage of GIS’s link between spatial and tabular data to access specific information such as assay, geotechnical, cadastral, metallurgical, environmental, and permitting data to prepare contour maps, derive surfaces, grade distribution, soil types, vegetation, cultural, wildlife, slope and aspect surfaces, neighborhood and zonal statistics, and other thematic layers of interest (Figure 4). Likewise, the exploration manager can benefit from GIS’s powerful 3D capabilities in performing visibility analysis of surface installations and display underground features in 3D.

3. Production

In the area of production, GIS is ideally suited to assist the production and engineering planners in confronting the routine challenges of a mining operation. In particular, the siting and querying of service facilities relative to the main production centers is a strong feature of GIS. Examples of these are numerous, among them:

• Siting of orepass, drawpoints, ramps, shaft, winze, raises, haulways that are within a certain distance of production centers (stopes) and meeting production criteria (Figure 5).
• Querying the production stopes affected by unstable ground conditions, hazardous gas, refractory ore, etc.
• In mine development, GIS can assist the planners in establishing the optimal location for exploration drifts, crosscuts, sublevels, manways, ventilation shafts
• In the service and ancillary systems, the planners and engineers can use GIS to find the least-cost path for routing delivery of supplies to working areas; find closest facility, establishing areas within service range, assign proximity, modeling inaccessible areas, and modeling mine ventilation networks using the "Geometric Network" feature. Site and query for mechanical and electrical shops, explosive magazine, water storage, pump station, sumps, warehouse and supply room, foreman office, lunch and washrooms. Also, obtain information from features such as water and air lines, hydraulic fill and generate maps showing directions to production centers.

1. Mine Safety

Mine safety is of paramount concern in the mining industry. In the effort to achieve the objective of safety and productivity, GIS can contribute in providing a safe working environment in underground mining by performing network analysis and determine the appropriate sites for refuge chambers and facilitate the prompt evacuation of mine personnel.

The siting of refuge chambers within a safe distance from production stopes can be easily achieved with GIS’s proximity analysis. A network of refuge chambers with adequate capacity and first-aid kits proportionate to miner’s concentration can be implemented. The same applies in mapping and finding the nearest exit and identifying the shortest route from the various working centers by creating a distance grid (Figure 6). To this effect, the creation of miner’s concentration grids is useful in finding potential areas of concern where the distance from production centers and refuge chamber capacity does not meet the safety criteria dictated by company policies and government regulations.

Other Applications of GIS in Mining

Other uses of the growing GIS technology in the mining industry are summarized below:

• Transport routes: mine planners utilize GIS in combination with remote sensing to plan the best alternative for transportation of goods and supplies to and from the nearest community to the mine site. Integrating thematic layers such as topography, land ownership, land-use, population, geotechnical, and climate can facilitate the objective selection of the economically and environmentally preferable alternative.
• Natural hazards: GIS and remote sensing assist the planners in identifying natural hazards such as potential landslides, floods, earthquakes, and volcanic eruptions prior to the construction of production and housing installations.
• Population distribution: planners of a new mine may need information on population density, socio-economic distribution, labor resources, housing, and recreational infrastructure in the preparation of the environmental impact assessment.
• Selection of sites for housing and dumps: use GIS capabilities for the selection of a housing site that meets safety, scenic, and recreational requirement within reasonable proximity to the mining operation. Topographic, vegetation, drainage, and soils coverages together with concentration of toxic substances are incorporated in the analysis.

Conclusion: In today’s complex and competitive business environment, GIS offers multiple applications in the mining industry with tools to gather, compile, process, display, analyze, and archive extensive volumes of data. GIS’s analytical features facilitate the integration of communications across departmental boundaries in a modern mining organization. The posting of geographic data in an intranet/Internet system allows the dissemination of mine data in a client-server configuration for review by remote users. A well designed, implemented, and supported GIS department is instrumental in the success of a mining operation.

Acknowledgements: Sunshine Mining and Refining Company provided the CAD source maps and data presented here. Figure 2 provided by Mike Price, ESRI.

References:

Legg, Christopher, 1994,"Remote Sensing and Geographic Information Systems: Geological mapping, mineral exploration and mining", John Wiley & Sons, pp.111-122

Price, M.J., 2001, "Geographic Information Systems and Industrial Minerals", preprint 01-116, Society of Mining Engineers

About the author:

Anthony D. Hammond is a mining engineer with twenty-year experience in mining operations. After completion of his Certificate in GIS, Mr. Hammond is currently working on the development of GIS applications in the mining industry.

www.Hammond.Swayne.com
e-mail: hammond @ swayne.com