Highlights
2020 has witnessed an incredible amount of change in the
mining industry, and in particular, the disclosure request of tailings data following the catastrophic Brumadinho disaster, the subsequent launch of the Global Tailings Portal, the release of the Global Industry Standard on Tailings Management (GTS), an overhaul of insurance underwriting guidelines and of course the global impact of COVID-19.
Mining companies all around the world are now reviewing their tailings management and are looking for ways to improve their monitoring, reporting, governance and insurance processes.
In this vodcast episode produced by Aspermont Media, journalist Paul Hunt, Decipher CEO Anthony Walker, and K2Fly COO Nic Pollock discusses the tailings landscape, the common challenges including monitoring, governance, disclosure and insurance, as well as Decipher and K2Fly’s new integrated TSF solution.
Watch the vodcast
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Find out the top 5 tools that Tier 1 and Tier 2 mining companies will be using to improve their TSF management in 2021
Mining companies are increasingly required to meet industry disclosure requests around TSF assets, effected by the Investor Mining and Tailings Safety Initiative. Topic Area VI of the new GTS also requires operators to support public disclosure of information about tailings facilities, and participate in global initiatives to create standardised, independent, industry-wide and publicly accessible information about facilities.
This data is usually stored in site based, siloed datasets, is often relatively difficult to obtain, time consuming to collect and challenging to release with full governance in place. Decipher’s Tailings Disclosure Database solution enables mining companies to capture, manage and disclose data whilst significantly increasing efficiency. Decipher’s innovative design enables customers to provide independent users (insurers, investors, auditors, ITRB etc.) with secure access to a quick and effective knowledge management tool with appropriate, vetted TSF data. This enables operators to visually demonstrate good governance, informs stakeholders to better understand the facility, and as a result, may potentially obtain or reduce insurance premiums and improve investor sentiment.
Topic Area III of the GTS aims to lift the performance bar for designing, constructing, operating, maintaining, monitoring and closing facilities. This topic area requires the ongoing use of an updated knowledge base, consideration of tailings technologies and a comprehensive monitoring system.
The Decipher platform integrates and centralises key TSF data from laboratories, site selected IoT devices and sensors, LiDAR, CCTV, drones, inspections and remote sensing (InSAR) into a central location on the cloud, serving internal and external users with critical up-to-date information and alarms, thus enabling them to effectively monitor their facilities from anywhere in the world. Importantly, Decipher is device agnostic providing customers with choice and flexibility.
TSFs have proven to be fairly tricky to monitor for ground movement at scale using conventional methods, however in recent years, the industry has increased the use of interferometric satellite-based radar (InSAR) type monitoring throughout operations, making this task remote, more cost effective and reducing the requirement for people on the ground. No singular technology has proven to be successful at predicting or identifying potential failures of TSFs – however, a comprehensive system of monitoring and procedures is current best practice, and InSAR is proving to be a valuable addition to these systems.
Decipher’s InSAR module allows customers to identify areas of concern across the full extent of the site. Additional more frequent monitoring technology is then often employed to understand the detail and magnitude of deformation of surfaces over time thus helping to identify and manage risks of potential failures or provide assurance that the area is safe and stable. Decipher is able to process InSAR data from several global InSAR providers, including CGG, 3VG and DARES.
Ongoing environmental monitoring is critical in understanding environmental health, efficiencies, constraints, compliance and achieving closure.
Armed with Decipher’s Environmental Monitoring module, mining operators can capture a wide range of monitoring data and indicators such as surface and groundwater quality, decant pond and underdrain water levels, and embankment conditions to name a few, helping to manage and report on project-specific data requirements. The ability to join these datasets with and/or alongside satellite data provides for powerful data interpretation and insights.
Topic Area I focuses on project-affected people and is intended to be addressed across all operational activities throughout the lifecycle of the facility. The topic area requires project-affected people to be afforded opportunities for meaningful engagement in decisions that affect them.
Decipher’s Stakeholders module allows customers to easily visualise, identify and track stakeholder profiles and metrics such as risk and influence on the map, capture ongoing engagements, and assign related actions to team members. This data can also originate from existing mine systems (such as K2Fly).
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