SLOPE STABILITY MONITORING have a team in place when you consider shift changes . That is a big commitment and investment so we give them a cost advantage as well as a safety advantage .”
GroundProbe has one of the world ’ s largest team of fully-qualified Geotechnical Engineers . GroundProbe today has over 800 SSRs in operation around the world . A lot of mines do own and operate them themselves using their own geotech teams after the appropriate training , with GroundProbe still maintaining and calibrating the units for them . They are still free to contact GroundProbe with questions and in some cases will request some help with back analysis after a failure has occurred . Gillespie adds : “ But many companies , such as the large top tier miners , like the assurance of having GroundProbe geotechs independently monitoring the SSRs for them .”
Aguilera adds : “ The benefits of us doing remote monitoring for their SSRs here is that we have a unique depth of experience and a global experience . The geotechs in Chile , Brazil and Indonesia can all support each other with knowledge and advice for example . Our procedures are also based on this worldwide experience . As we are GroundProbe we also have a good relationship with maintenance staff – if we see a grey alert , which may allude to a mechanical fault or lost connection – we call our own support team who will go to site to check the unit or fix it remotely . When using our remote services , this process is much faster .”
The GroundProbe geotech continuously communicates with an on-site geotech from the mine ’ s staff . They might inform them that they have identified some instability . The on-site geotech will let the mine management know and then the next steps will be determined in terms of operations .
GroundProbe also offers MonitorIQ – its dedicated geotechnical analysis platform allowing users to view and analyse data from single or multiple GroundProbe sensors . Its most advanced incarnation MonitorIQ ® Enterprise , allows users to import , view and compare data from an exhaustive range of geotechnical and environmental monitoring sensors deployed across an entire mine site , not only SSRs or other radars but also data from laser sensors , GNSS and InSAR data , piezometers and extensometers for example . Regardless of the technology used to capture it , users can interact with all information in the same way , on one screen .
What about the tailings monitoring market , is that as important today for GSS as open pit mine monitoring ? The tailings disaster at Brumadinho in 2019 was a key factor in the setting up of GroundProbe ’ s third remote monitoring centre in Belo Horizonte . Aguilera : “ We monitor a lot of tailings dams from there as part of our GSS offering there , for Vale but also a number of other mining clients in Brazil . Plus in some cases we have GroundProbe people based at customer operations . But as with Chile , there are some sites that have our SSRs but not the GSS element , where we will service , maintain and calibrate them but they will manage the monitoring and analysis themselves .”
As stated , the Santiago facility is focussed on Spanish-speaking Latin America – primarily clients in Chile and Peru but also Argentina and Bolivia , as well as Mexico for example . Gillespie said while in the past most dealings with customers regarding GroundProbe was on a mine by mine basis , today given its depth of market share , some of the major miners now have multiple radars across multiple sites so in some cases these are now covered by broader more strategic agreements including more than one site , involving multiple radars and different GSS elements .
Finally , what is the procedure for the GSS monitoring ? “ It depends on the customer – sometimes we work with trends , where we look at trends in displacements across the wall . Other customers want specific velocity thresholds put in place which they define and we use here in the remote monitoring centre plus they can also have in MonitorIQ which will give an alarm when that threshold is reached .”
On the radars themselves , Pablo Villalobos , Regional Manager Remote
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