Optimizing exploration and production efforts, while ensuring worker safety, are paramount concerns for the multi-billion dollar mining industry. In accordance with health and safety regulations mandated by many governments, mining companies implement extensive measures to ensure the safety of their workers, including training programs, emergency response plans, advanced warning and communication systems, and high-tech escape devices. Mining companies are on a mission to protect workers’ lives while maximizing investments in sophisticated machinery and equipment.

Mining companies on the cutting edge are exploring new training techniques using products similar to the computer-based flight simulator packages used by the military for years. By immersing equipment operator trainees in a “real-world” scenario, mining companies can successfully train them without sacrificing expensive equipment or putting them in danger. Some of today’s simulator training programs for the mining industry are made as realistic as possible by incorporating high-resolution satellite imagery.

Australia’s Immersive Technologies (www.immersivetechnologies.com) began producing computer-based training systems for the mining industry in 1993. The company, whose business partners include the likes of equipment manufacturer Caterpillar Inc., incorporates DigitalGlobe’s imagery into production processes for its Transportable and Free Standing Advanced Equipment Simulators. The imagery is provided by Sinclair Knight Merz, a DigitalGlobe business partner that distributes QuickBird imagery in Australia, New Zealand and the South Pacific region.

QuickBird imagery, with its 60-centimeter resolution and high accuracy, provides realistic backdrops and close-up views that mining equipment trainees find helpful for navigating a mining area and understanding the local topography. Coming to life in 3-D perspective, the images clearly show access roads, faults and fractures, vegetation, drainage systems, water and pollution sources, soil erosion and a host of other critical features. By properly identifying the existence and characteristics of such features, mining operators can reduce risk by visualizing them within the safety of a computer setting.

Relates Greg Karadjian, development manager for Immersive Technologies’ Visual Database Department, “The imagery has reduced project duration, mitigated project risks and improved the quality and consistency of our products, resulting in an enhanced and safer training environment for Immersive Technologies’ clients.”


A Rich Mining Tool
Although high-resolution satellite imagery may be relatively new to simulator training, it’s not a new tool to the mining industry. Used for applications ranging from environmental impact assessments and infrastructure evaluations to mineral deposit discovery and vegetation classification, 60-centimeter resolution imagery is valued for mining applications because of its convenience and information-rich characteristics.

Mines are often far removed from civilized and populated areas. As a result, the logistics of on-site or aerial surveillance can be onerous and expensive. Satellites, by contrast, aren’t restricted by the remoteness of any location or the complexity of any geographic region, and can reliably collect data over inaccessible mining sites in many parts of the world.

Lower resolution satellite imagery traditionally used by the mining industry is no match for high-resolution imagery, which offers more frequent revisit times, consistent quality and greater detail. These qualities make high-resolution imagery suitable for long-term monitoring of mine sites, on either an ad hoc or scheduled basis, to meet operational needs.

For applications such as mine rehabilitation, which often lasts for decades, mine operators can use routine satellite monitoring to assure government agencies and the public that mine rehabilitation programs and plans are meeting regulatory and environmental mandates. Moreover, satellites aren’t limited by changes in weather patterns as aircraft often are. This convenience has enabled Immersive Technologies, for instance, to request multiple image collections over the same mining site in an area that experiences heavy precipitation and often is submerged in cloud cover.

“We were able to evaluate all of the available imagery, and select the best imagery for the visual database we are creating for a gold mine in Papua, New Guinea,” explains Karadjian. “Aerial photography was an expensive option.”

Traditionally, Immersive Technologies has relied upon its clients to provide visual information input for its simulators, ranging from high-quality satellite imagery to aerial photography with distortion problems or incomplete data sets. According to Karadjian, there was no assurance of the quality or relevance of the data.

“This created large variations in project costs,” he says. “The DigitalGlobe satellite imagery meets our needs for our simulator packages.”

Mineral exploration and production are leading today’s geologists into complex geographic regions. By leveraging traditional applications of high-resolution satellite imagery for mining, and extending those applications to advanced computer-based training simulators, mining companies can explore sites in a realistic but protected environment, and reduce the risks associated with real-world mining applications.