Moradi, Agioutantis, Roghanchi and Shafrick receive grant to enhance health and safety outcomes in mining

UK Pigman College of Engineering researchers in the Department of Mining Engineering Ali Moradi (PI), Zach Agioutantis (Co-I), Pedram Roghanchi (Co-I) and Steven Schafrik (Co-I) have received a $1,250,000 grant over five years from the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health for their project, "Strategic Health and Safety Optimization in Transition from Open Pit to Underground Mines." 

The overarching aim of this project is to reduce risks and enhance health and safety outcomes during the transition phase from open pit to underground mining operations. The project will develop innovative, data-driven solutions to ensure the well-being of workers and the efficiency of mining operations by addressing key areas of concern, including underground access options and their implications for ventilation and ground control, blasting techniques, and the integration of advanced safe design, safety planning, and operational management into the management control systems, concluding to a best practice guideline to be used by the mining industry currently in or planning to start the transition.

ABSTRACT

Optimizing health and safety in transitioning from surface to underground mines With around a century of history in transitioning from surface to underground mining and even though more than 80 years has passed since the establishment of the ?rst mine safety act in the US, we are yet to see a comprehensive health and safety considerate planning, design, and operation in such a mining environment. However, transitioning from surface to underground mining requires careful planning, adequate training, and robust safety measures to mitigate the health and safety risks associated with working in such a complex environment. If approved by the government, in this 5-year long project, a team of ten experts including four professors along with four Ph.D. and two M.S. students will work on the four main pillars of a transition from surface to underground, namely, ground control, production planning, fleet management, and ventilation to provide the partners and agencies with health and safety considerate transition plan. Analyzing impact of surface activity on underground and vice versa, in each of above-mentioned pillars, predicting possible health and safety risk resulting from those impacts, and finally prioritizing and minimizing those risks, with four distinct, yet, highly interacting projects, this endeavor will conclude with a comprehensive best practice guideline to be used by the partner organizations in their already transitioned, in transition, or planned to transition mining operation to plan, design, and operate with optimum health and safety considerations. Apart from the final deliverable, structuring the projects on agile management strategy and utilizing Kaizen technique from lean production approach, semi-annual meetings will be held with the partners to continually improve the works by receiving feedbacks on the interim findings and inputs for the next steps so that the applicability of the findings are verified.