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Metals And Mining Review: Specials Magazine
The mining industry is circumvented with deeper mines, social and geopolitical risks, rising energy costs, complex ore bodies, infrastructure shortages and resource scarcity. In such a scenario, mining companies are under immense pressure to accelerate efficiency, control costs, and improve safety performance. Forward-looking mining owner-operators are quickly realizing the importance of optimizing current sites with continuous infrastructure development to extract the target mineral or ore. From large to small mining companies, the key to survival is increasing productivity efficiency and curtailing costs by investing and participating in today’s game-changing technologies and analytics. Identifying this need, Bentley Systems, a leader in software development for infrastructure needs, has developed solutions for the mining industry to optimize mine operations and effectively manage assets. The company’s solutions help plan, design, and survey both underground and surface mines while supporting infrastructure for mines. Bentley’s solutions enable miners to create and manage spatially enabled digital data for their mines and infrastructure. Bentley’s mine design solutions can help clients not only speed up their planning with the rule-based design but also provide them with the ability of on-the-fly scheduling and evaluation. The company’s mining applications ensure that clients can create optimal plans using multi-discipline conveyor layout that can further be refined for costs and footprints. ...Read more
Top Mining Safety Solutions
The mining sector has long made, and continues to make, a significant contribution to economic growth and development. From the first copper age smelters in Cyprus to the gold rushes in the U.S. in the 1800s to the present-day extraction of minerals, mines have made vital contributions to national economies. Despite being one of the oldest industries, the mining sector has always displayed a strong affinity toward innovation to improve its operations and ensure better safety, efficiency, and environmental integration. To that end, today’s progressive mining companies are keen on leveraging new-age technologies like AI, robotics, 3D imaging, and cloud computing to transcend into a mining future that boasts data-driven methodologies. This is where Vancouver-based Motion Metrics, having invested more than 15 years on researching advanced mining technologies, seizes the opportunity to lead the path for intuitive, reliable, cutting-edge mining solutions. Blending AI and machine vision with traditional mining processes, Motion Metrics has developed an advanced suite of monitoring solutions for mining equipment like shovels, loaders, excavators, and conveyor belts to make mining operations smarter, safer, and easier. “Analytics, automation, and advanced safety systems define the future of mining operations and AI is the key to achieving them,” says Dr. Shahram Tafazoli, president and CEO of Motion Metrics. Established in 1999, Motion Metrics was one of the early birds to understand and act upon this trend.It has grown as an innovative technology provider for the mining industry ever since, solving some of the most crucial mining challenges through AI. “Today, AI defines us,” Tafazoli asserts with a sense of accomplishment. Motion Metrics’ suite of mining solutions comprises three core products: ShovelMetrics™, LoaderMetrics™, and PortaMetrics™. While ShovelMetrics and LoaderMetrics offer complete monitoring for shovels, excavators, and wheel loaders, PortaMetrics is a hand-held point-and-shoot 3D imaging tablet that provides near real-time rock fragmentation analysis for optimizing blasting results. The newest addition to this suite of monitoring solutions is BeltMetrics™, designed to measure rock size distribution on conveyor belts accurately and at high sampling rate. Like PortaMetrics, BeltMetrics uses a rugged high-res stereo camera pair and AI algorithms to ensure every visible rock is scaled and measured accurately without interrupting production. “BeltMetrics is an apt alternative to traditional sieve analysis and helps companies achieve quantum performance gains,” mentions Tafazoli. Pivotal to these products is MetricsManager™ Pro—a centralized web-app that unites all the equipment data to help mining personnel access information from anywhere. The cloud-based software also enables miners to receive status updates, in-depth performance reports, equipment activity logs, and rock fragmentation data, thereby revolutionizing the way mining equipment is monitored and operated. ...Read more
Comprehensive Mining Data Provider
Modern mine sites are surveyed with a variety of technologies such as LiDAR, GPS and drones. While each of these methods have pros and cons and varying suitability depending on the size and topography of the mine site, many traditional surveying techniques are resource-intensive and can pose a safety risk to on-site surveyors. Creating additional challenges, their accuracy and reliability is not ideal for large areas or hazardous terrain. Although drone surveys, now popular with many mine surveyors, are useful in some circumstances and can usually cover a few square kilometres in a single day, the overall costs are very high when site safety training, drone maintenance and site operations support are included. A safe and cost-effective solution for surveying large mine sites has emerged with PhotoSat. Headquartered in Vancouver, BC, PhotoSat is the world’s only engineering quality satellite surveying provider, delivering reliable data which shortens timelines and eliminates surveying delays in all phases of resource and engineering projects. “Our surveying satellites take photos of the entire mine site from 750 kms above, covering hundreds of square kilometers in about one minute,” explains Gerry Mitchell, PhotoSat President. “Stereo satellite photos save both time and costs for our clients while completely addressing safety concerns.” Unlike other surveying methods, PhotoSat provides an instantaneous snapshot of the entire mine site, with accurate data about pits, stockpiles, tailings, and dumps. With consistent data formatted for a variety of mining engineering software systems, engineering groups can simplify tasks related to data handling and data processing, allowing them to focus on their core tasks. A Registered Professional Geophysicist, Mitchell’s significant experience working at the senior technical level in both mining and hydrocarbon exploration for companies such as BP culminated in the founding of PhotoSat. Using data processing algorithms, methods and software tools applied to the high-resolution satellite photos, PhotoSat creates satellite surveys with elevation accuracy of up to 15cm. Licensed to provide satellite surveying across the globe even in remote locations and those with difficult terrain, sparse vegetation, and hazardous geography, PhotoSat delivers fast, easy access to rich mine site data that helps mine operators make operational assessments, which can, for example, lead to decisions to enhance the lifespan of the tailing ponds and therefore, the mine itself. The company streamlines mine site management with its survey data and makes even volume change measurement monitoring of open pit mines safe and efficient. ...Read more
CXO INSIGHTS
Intelligent Methods Drive New Understanding
Anthony Scriffignano, Chief Data Scientist, Dun & Bradstreet
Small can be Smart(er) too: Steps for SMEs in Manufacturing to win in the Era of Industry 4.0
Cheng Jang Thye, Chief Architect and Head, Digital eXperience Center, Fujitsu Ltd (TYO:6702)
How Digital Assets are Transforming The Mining and Metals Markets
Jeremy Samuel, CEO, MetaliCoin
Eight Lessons In Leadership
Sharon Gietl, VP-IT & CIO, The Doe Run Company
IN FOCUS
Advancements Propelling Metal Recycling
With the potential to foresee market trends, improve traceability, and repurpose materials in novel ways, key technology breakthroughs like artificial intelligence (AI), innovative equipment, and advanced robots are opening up new opportunities for the sector.
The Role of Metal Recycling in Energy Conservation
This is because metal products can undergo recycling multiple times, which helps to avoid their buildup in landfills. Metal recycling is an essential method for conserving energy.
EDITORIAL
Intensive Digital Penetration is the Key
In the current day and age, computational technologies such as Internet of Things (IoT), machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI) have become an inevitable part of businesses across industries. Vendors are harnessing these technological wonders through efficient solutions that enhance the operational procedures at an enterprise level. On similar lines, the legacy-driven metals and mining landscape is slowly being permeated by new-age platforms and software programs. It is therefore, an imperative that modern decision makers in the mining space start reconsidering their strategies by involving technologies in order to bring in a significant increase in productivity and gain a better control over expenditure.
The transition of daily operations from a traditional to a systems environment has been digitally supreme. Not only has it empowered organizations to lighten their burden in the operational front, but the transformation has also been beneficial to the mining companies in terms of being capable of focusing on other areas of interest, such as employee and customer engagement.
Similar to other industries, the collection of data is an important part of the businesses associated with the mining realm. Vendors are educating their clients in the correct way of deploying sensors in order to collect relevant information, especially in the areas that are far from human reach. Solution providers are realizing the major role of big data analytics in this process; the utilization of data analytics is facilitating easy analysis of information and delivering actionable insights for a future-ready business.
Metals Mining Review presents this latest edition featuring suggestions and feedback from industry leaders and decision makers. We hope this publication enlightens you with the information on the most sought-after technological advancements relevant to the metals and mining space and helps you take wise decisions while adopting effective solutions for your business ventures.
