Mining and Minerals

Geotechnical Instrumentation and Slope Monitoring

A slope gives warning before it fails, and the failures that kill people are the ones where the warning was being recorded and nobody had agreed in advance what reading would stop the operation. This course closes that gap. Delegates work through failure mechanisms and the deformation signature each produces, so that a monitoring system is designed around what is actually expected. Instrument types are covered: prisms and robotic total stations, radar, satellite interferometry, extensometers, piezometers and inclinometers, with the coverage, precision and blind spots of each. Installation and survival in a working pit are addressed, since an instrument destroyed by a blast measures nothing. Data management and alarm thresholds follow, including inverse velocity analysis and the interpretation of accelerating movement. Trigger action response plans are covered as the core deliverable: who is told, who decides and who clears the area. Communication under uncertainty is addressed. The course closes on back analysis after a failure and on system audit.