Enhanced Ground Control Assessment for Improving Safety in Mine Design

Over the last 20 years, NIOSH has developed and validated a number of software tools addressing safe mine design with respect to ground control. These tools are available free of charge to the mining industry to help design safer mining environments with respect to pillar stability in longwall and room and pillar mines, either in single seam or multiple seam operations. In addition, these tools address other aspects of mine design such as formation characterization, support requirements, etc. These tools have been designed as stand-alone PC based software packages addressing specific issues, such as panel pillar stability, barrier pillar stability, chain pillar stability in longwall mining, etc. Mine design, especially with respect to ground control, is a complex procedure, may require multiple iterations and may have to be modified for different panels within the same mine. As cloud computing gains momentum, there is a definite need to develop internet based applications for mine design. These applications would be accecible by mine personnel at all times, even underground.