Ingo asks for information on GIS for both underground and
opencast mines.
Mining Magazine (http://www.mininginformation.com)
published by Mining Journal Ltd (http://mining-journal.com),
60 Worship Street, London, EC2A 2HD, has carried quite a
number of references to the use of GIS and GPS in mining.
My CD of contents only brings me up to 1998, but references
in that and the previous year include the following feature
articles:
Sep 1997, p158 "An image for all reasons"
April 1998, p241 "Bringing the mine to the office"
May 1998, p312 "Satelite positioning"
May 1998, p323 "Demystifying Satcomms"
Thinking of the surface mines, GPS may also be of interest.
Some articles on this theme include:
November 1996, p287 "Caterpillar's Autonomous Mining Truck"
June 1998, p387 "GPS in Mining"
November 1998, Mining North America Supplement, p12,
"Computerised earthmoving"
Some mining history buffs might think all this is too up to date
for this list, but one could argue that yesterday is history and,
at the rate things change, all the above are well and truly
history by now.
I've not heard how Caterpillar have got on with selling their
truck, but the idea of a 300 ton capacity truck going around
a mine with no driver on board struck me as being quite
spooky. As the shovel moved forward to dig into the muck
pile, it sent a signal to the truck so the latter, when it came
back from its trip to the crusher, "knew" it had to park a few
metres further forward than the position it had parked in on
its previous return. Wow!
Tony Brewis
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