Managing mining risk

A real-time risk management system that can help improve safety in mines will be available globally, after a Queensland company was awarded a licence to commercialise the technology from Australia's Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO).

Mackay-based company, Mining Logic Solutions, has signed an exclusive global licence agreement with CSIRO Exploration and Mining to commercially develop the Nexsys real-time risk management system.

Nexsys allows underground coal mines to interrogate vast amounts of digital information from a variety of sensors and systems throughout the mine, which normally do not communicate with each other.

The system analyses this data to provide real-time risk management and decision support for control room operators, including automatic triggering of response plans if it discovers a hazardous condition.

Nexsys can extract critical data from existing proprietary strata control, ventilation monitoring, supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) and other critical mine monitoring systems, and turn this data into knowledge in real-time – a capability that did not previously exist.

'The potential market for Nexsys is not limited to Australia, it is ideally suited for export to many other countries including India, China, the US and Canada,'  said CSIRO Exploration and Mining chief Dr Mike McWilliams.

Nexsys was developed by CSIRO Exploration and Mining with the support of the Australian Coal Association Research Program (ACARP) and the Japan Coal Energy Centre (JCoal).

JCoal’s input was vital to the success of the programme, through financial support,  participation in the initial research goals and provision of test sites in Japan to demonstrate the technology.

The technology will be developed into a commercial product within 12 months.