Abstract

Fingerprinting of mining environment involves identifying and characterising the unique environmental impacts associated with mining activities. To this end, this seminar highlights the use of smart sensing to “fingerprint” mining environment (land, vegetation and air), citing three examples:

• Automated characterisation of spoil piles: Using drone and mobile images, this method marks a transformative advancement in sustainable mine waste management practices.
• Integrated UAV-Hyperspectral and LiDAR data acquisition systems: These systems establish a quantifiable basis to assess the condition of vegetation in sensitive mining environments.
• Coal mine methane emission estimates: This highlights rapidly evolving multifaceted landscape of coal mine methane emission estimates.  

These examples demonstrate how smart sensing technologies and multidisciplinary approaches are being utilised in mining environment.

Bio

Associate Professor Simit Raval is the Director of the undergraduate program in mining engineering at the University of New South Wales (UNSW) in Sydney Australia. Simit has more than 28 years of combined experience in mining industry and academia. He is specialised in the integration of sensing technologies. He leads a group of researchers focused on utilising data from sensors mounted on various platforms, from satellite through to UAVs/drones, to visualise, identify and monitor the environmental and safety aspects of the operations. He has supervised PhD research projects involving drone-based smart sensing, underground mobile laser scanning, image-based automated material characterisation, mine automation, mine rehabilitation/closure, climate change and asteroid mining.

References and Related Papers

• Thiruchittampalam S; Banerjee BP; Glenn NF; Raval S, 2024, 'Geotechnical characterisation of coal spoil piles using high-resolution optical and multispectral data: A machine learning approach', Engineering Geology, 329, http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.enggeo.2024.107406
• Thiruchittampalam S; Singh SK; Banerjee BP; Glenn NF; Raval S, 2023, 'Spoil characterisation using UAV-based optical remote sensing in coal mine dumps', International Journal of Coal Science and Technology, 10, http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s40789-023-00622-4

• Banerjee BP; Raval S, 2022, 'Mapping Sensitive Vegetation Communities in Mining Eco-space using UAV-LiDAR', International Journal of Coal Science and Technology, 9, pp. 40, http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s40789-022-00509-w
• Banerjee BP; Raval S, 2021, 'A particle swarm optimization based approach to pre-tune programmable hyperspectral sensors', Remote Sensing, 13, http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/rs13163295
• Banerjee BP; Raval S; Cullen PJ, 2020, 'UAV-hyperspectral imaging of spectrally complex environments', International Journal of Remote Sensing, 41, pp. 4136 - 4159, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01431161.2020.1714771