Mining
InSAR is an Important Element of The Geotechnical Monitoring for Mining
The mining sector is the biggest customer for the InSAR service providers today. InSAR monitoring is de facto a standard for large-scale mining operations and is adopted by almost all leading mining companies.
InSAR is used for general mining areas monitoring as well as for open pits’ slopes stability monitoring, tailing and waste dams, mine infrastructures, including access roads and production facilities.
InSAR is highly instrumental in providing mining monitoring for surface monitoring of underground mining operations, which often cause deformations on a wide area, sometimes far beyond the territory of a mining site.
InSAR’s high sensitivity to small-scale change and sufficient temporal resolution, 6 days for Sentinel and to 1 day in the future for new commercial programs, makes it a perfect tool to generate early warnings and optimize in situ monitoring or the deployment of experts and expensive equipment.
In situ sensors and instruments provide highly precise and continuous data, the data often remain localized, unable to render a broader or “synoptic” view, which may limit the ability to draw conclusions.
InSAR is, by far, the most cost-effective tool to obtain data on land stability and irreplaceable for the monitoring of large areas.
Not a direct competitor to any other monitoring techniques such as total stations, prisms, ground-based radars, inclinometers, piezometers, tiltmeters etc. It is a powerful complement, which brings the best results when used in combination.
InSAR is also highly useful to provide for environmental monitoring and environmental footprint control of a mining operation. It can be complemented by other remote sensing techniques, which apart from the area stability provide insights into the heath of the soil and water, vegetation and other ecosystem’s conditions parameters.
Apart from InSAR monitoring GeoKinesia also provides a number of remote sensing monitoring services, which allow to gather and analyze information on the environmental impact of a mining operation and ensure its environmental safety.
Another challenge for a mining company represents abandoned or closed mines, as many of them are prone to deformation, often posing a significant risk to the nearby areas, and also is a source of contamination of the land and water in the vicinity.
Although instrumental monitoring can be used, it is not practical and expensive and for remote areas or in some countries almost unviable.
GeoKinesia renders abandoned mines stability monitoring as well as other types of the environmental monitoring, which includes spectral, multi- and hyper-spectral, optical and other data analysis, which provides reliable tool to ensure sufficient control of the abandon mines and closed operations with minimal investment and maximum effectiveness.
