Case Studies, Innovations, & Guidance in the Field of Slope Monitoring in Open Pit Mines: A Collection of Peer Reviewed Research

Abstract

Slope stability hazards such as rockfall and slope failures remain a critical risk for the mining industry (Ross 2017). With globally declining ore grades across metalliferous mines (Calvo, Mudd et al. 2016), many operations are driving pits to new depths and sometimes at steeper angles. The mine permitting process in the United States is challenging, thus operators are focusing on simultaneous successive mining cuts in currently permitted deposits. The two challenges mentioned above are increasing the likelihood of slope stability hazards in the mining industry. Specifically slope steepening can increase the likelihood of slope failure, and successive and concurrent mining cuts can generate a higher potential for rockfall hazards. This is creating an additional need for controls to manage these hazards effectively. Outside of the mining industry landslides in natural and constructed slopes cause approximately 1000 fatalities per year according to data assessed between 1998 to 2017 (WHO 2023). While the overall trend of the frequency of natural landslides does not seem to be systematically increasing, there is an increasing trend of human caused events in recent years (Froude and Petley 2018). The research presented in the publications below can be applicable to civil, natural, and mined slopes, and could be used to reduce risk. It is demonstrated in the four publications below that slope monitoring is a crucial risk reduction measure in the surface mining environment. The publications below show how it can be used to inform the calibration of rockfall models and help in the development of rockfall control measures using unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) videography and photogrammetric surveys. While it is known that slope monitoring is essential to keep miners safe in the open pit environment (Girard, Mayerle et al. 1998), the research herein provides additional guidance on developing slope monitoring systems based on risk. The articles below also demonstrate how comprehensive analysis of often overlooked details in monitoring data can reveal new details of failure mechanisms, such as new learnings surrounding the Manefay failure, and can be readily applied to other slope failures around the world.