Harnessing AI and Digital Twins to Enhance Safety in Mining Operations

Metals and Mining Review | Wednesday, November 22, 2023

Digital twins technology allows mining operators to analyse and decipher information from smart sensors and machine interconnection in order to better operation safety and efficiency through AI-enabled technologies.

FREMONT, CA: The use of AI can support faster and better decision-making, which is crucial for improving the safety conditions for frontline workers and decreasing their exposure to hazardous situations. Miners can use digital twin technology to restructure the monitoring and managing of safety risks and unfavourable events.

Digital twins are virtual duplicates of physical processes, assets, and systems, and they use machine learning, AI, and advanced analytics with data in order to provide real-time digital simulation models that are constantly upgraded as their real, physical counterparts, or ‘twins’, change.

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Digital twins technology allows mining operators to analyse and decipher information from smart sensors and machine interconnection in order to better operation safety and efficiency through AI-enabled technologies. The use of AI is set to transform mining into one of the most secure professions in this category.

An enterprise digital twin (EDT) is used to resolve mining safety issues.

As a function, an EDT should behave as a system of convergence among different dimensions that impact the safety of the workers and aid in the assessment of safety risk scenarios. If an EDT is AI-enabled, it brings an overview of all operational safeties in real time, a solution that is built to provide a real-time risk index for every area in a mining operation. The solution combines offline and real-time data from varying sources such as work instructions, HSE policies, standard operating procedures, RCAs, FMEA, ERP, maintenance plans and schedules, training and competency, geo-location and access, IoT sensors, CCTV, watches, mobiles, weather data, wearables, and more.

The digital twin will use this data to calculate the area-wise real-time risk index, offer area-wise real-time risk scores and trends, and allow miners to eliminate unpleasant events through real-time RCA and predictive analytics. Safety and health supervisors can use this data to take actions that eliminate these risks. The EDT can provide real-time signals to supervisors and plant/equipment operators. It can also alert using notifications, through SMS or emails. The solution should be highly customisable, such that it can be executed in multiple areas of mining operations including mining, processing, and logistics. The solution should have a built-in auto-prediction video analytics feature for PPE identification, posture detection, fire detection, moving object identification, recognition of unsafe areas, and triggering alerts, as well as ‘what-if’ simulations for experimentation and better strategic decisions.

EDTs can aid miners in gaining insights across the company and allow them to respond more quickly, proactively recognise possible deviations, and have the least oversight. An EDT is capable of creating numerous situational use cases and simulated scenarios to recognise hidden risks. It can assist with risk-predicting models that predict real-time risks and recommend actions for faster decision-making.

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