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Mining Engineering

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Full-Text Articles in Engineering

Embrace The Unknown: Stop Saying “It’S Too Hard” And Start Embracing Uncertainty In Your Mine Plans, C. Roos Feb 2017

Embrace The Unknown: Stop Saying “It’S Too Hard” And Start Embracing Uncertainty In Your Mine Plans, C. Roos

Mining Engineering

Nearly every input to a mine plan is based on an estimate. The estimates may be from sample data, historical information, models, or personal opinion, but in all cases, these values are simply expected values (means). In real life, we do not get to iterate the exact conditions at our mining operation many times to ensure that that average value is attained. The expected value also tells us nothing about the spread of values that that input might take on. The result is a significant amount of unquantified uncertainty in our mine plans. Unfortunately, it is often too expensive or …


Evaluation & Selection Of Novel Surveying Systems For Use In Surface Coal Mining, M. Drake, C. Roos, P. Conrad, T. Stack Feb 2017

Evaluation & Selection Of Novel Surveying Systems For Use In Surface Coal Mining, M. Drake, C. Roos, P. Conrad, T. Stack

Mining Engineering

This paper presents the evaluation Montana Tech completed for the Western Energy Company Rosebud Mine relating to the benefits of survey data collected using novel technologies over traditional methods for topographic surveys. These technologies include Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS), photogrammetry, and laser scanning/LIDAR. Utilizing these technologies, large areas such as reclamation areas and cast blasts can be surveyed in a timely manner for use by the mining operation. The areas that were evaluated were the improvements in the safety of employees and the time required to collect data. In addition, there is also a potential cost savings for the operation, …