Australasian Mine Safety

Mining companies have taken great strides to improve operator safety in recent years, and collision awareness systems will likely further this trend as mine sites globally strive to achieve a zero-incident workplace. But while new technologies can help this improvement eff ort, technology alone should not be a mine's only line of defence in the goal to avoid vehicle collisions; su� icient training and operators that are fit for the job are also required to achieve total mine site safety. GLOBAL DRIVERS FOR IMPROVED SAFETY Vehicle-to-vehicle collisions are among the top five causes of high-risk incidents in mines, resulting in equipment downtime, productivity losses, equipment- and personnel-related costs, injuries, and fatalities. These factors have generated a global motivation to focus on vehicle safety within mines, including increased regulation and legislation that will soon require mining organizations to have and use a safety system that can detect and minimize vehicle collisions. South Africa, for example, recently passed legislation stating that any open-pit mine in which a collision risk is significant must include a means for any "diesel- powered trackless mobile machine" to automatically detect the presence of any other such machine within its vicinity, and upon detecting the presence of another machine, the operators in both vehicles shall be alerted to each other's presence by means of an eff ective warning (such as an audible and/or visual cue). In Australia, the New South Wales government defines the various levels of collision intervention capabilities that mine operators should consider when conducting a risk assessment and implementing a collision management system. The MDG-2007 Guideline for the Selection and Implementation of Collision Management Systems for Mining was drafted by the New South Wales government for use in that region but is quickly and widely becoming accepted as a global standard. COMMON CHALLENGES FOR COLLISION AWARENESS SYSTEMS ON THE MARKET TODAY Several collision awareness systems are available to the mining industry today, all seeking to improve operator safety. But, at this point, many challenges still commonly exist that prevent them from ensuring a collision-free environment. For example, vehicle-to-vehicle communication is often delayed and unreliable with many existing technologies; traditional communications networks require that a signal hit numerous access points before reaching the operator or central o� ice, which delays the notification and gives the operator very little chance to aff ect the situation. But the challenge that seems most prevalent in today's collision awareness systems lies in the frequency of "false positives" (alarms that occur when no collision threat is present). These false alarms, also known as "nuisance alarms," often desensitize operators to actual collision risks, training them (in a sense) to adopt unsafe practices as a result of alarm annoyance; as operators realize the number and frequency of nuisance alarms, they begin to tune out all alarms. These false positives are very widespread and pose an extremely dangerous challenge for collision awareness systems in the mining industry. MINIMIZING FALSE ALARMS Modular Mining Systems' approach to collision awareness focuses on minimizing false alarms while providing real-time information about potential high-risk incidents. The MineAlertTM Collision Awareness System (CAS) utilizes intelligent path prediction and scenario-based pattern recognition algorithms to filter out the potential non-risk-based nuisance and proximity alarms, helping to dramatically reduce the false alarm rate. This intelligent filtering capability, coupled with a simple user interface and near-instant peer-to-peer communications via a dedicated safety channel, enables operators to make split- 55 www.amsj.com.au / Winter 2018 / AUST R A L AS I A N M I N E SA F E T Y J O U R N A L

• Cover