Catastrophic ground collapse in mines is the main hazard for safety of workers and for the mining activity. Indeed, some mining methods, such as longwall and room and pillar retreat, create overburden to cave. This creates highly variable stress conditions that can be difficult to predict. From both the safety and production point of view, unplanned ground falls resulting from these conditions are unacceptable but still frequent, causing fatalities, stoppage in operations, damage of equipment and lost ore reserves. Monitoring the alteration of the state of the rock mass during underground mining operations plays a key-role to forecast the failure of the rocks. This is currently done through 3D LET (Local Earthquake Tomography) computational analysis on data provided by existing seismographic networks once every month and through quasimanual analysis of experts: the procedure is time-consuming and expensive, the results are difficult to be interpreted by the mine’s decision makers and not fully reliable (high possibility of error). Mines-In-Time (MIT) is a solution developed by Space Earth Technologies (SET) for monitoring in almost real time the rock mass stress alteration during mining operations, to be integrated in a Decision Support System (DSS) to avoid risks and cost related to mines collapse. The system is based on the innovative 4D LET algorithm (three spatial dimensions + time), able to analyse both natural and induced micro-seismicity such as movements due to drilling or other mining operations. The feasibility study allowed to analyse the needs, specifications and potentials for market acceptance of MIT solution. The outcomes of the Feasibility Study have demonstrated the potentialities of the MIT solution.
