Mine surveying science and technology for contemporary and future mining industries

Abstract

Mine surveying is an indispensable and crucial basic technical work in the process of mineral resource development. It plays an important role throughout the entire life cycle of a mine, from exploration, design, construction, and production to closure, and is known as the ‘‘eyes of the mine”. With the rapid development of satellite technology, computer science, artificial intelligence, robotics, and spatiotemporal big data, mine surveying science and technology supported by spatial information technology is increasingly playing the role of the ‘‘brain of the mine”. This paper systematically summarizes the characteristics of mining surveying science and technology in contemporary and future mining development. First, based on the requirements of safe, efficient, and green development in modern mining, an analysis is conducted on the innovative practices of intelligent mining methods; secondly, it explains the transformation of regional economic and mining economic integration towards lengthening the industrial chain and scientific and technological innovation. Regarding intelligent mining, this paper discusses three technical dimensions: (1) By establishing a spatiotemporal data model of the mine, real-time perception and remote intelligent control of the production system are realized; (2) Based on the transparent mine three-dimensional geological modelling technology, the accuracy of geological condition prediction and the scientific nature of mining decisions are significantly improved; (3) By integrating multi-source remote sensing data and deep learning algorithms, a high-precision coal and rock identification system is constructed. The study further revealed the innovative application value of mine surveying in the post-mining era, including: diversified utilization of underground space in mining areas (tourism development, geothermal energy storage, pumped storage, etc.), multi-platform remote sensing coordinated ecological restoration monitoring, and optimized land space planning in mining areas. Practice has proved that mine surveying technology is an important technical engine for promoting green transformation and high-quality development in resource-based regions, and has irreplaceable strategic significance for achieving coordinated development of energy, economy, and environment.

Keywords

Mine surveying / Intelligent mining / Post-mining era / Ecological restoration

CRediT authorship contribution statement

Zhengfu Bian: Writing – review & editing, Writing – original draft, Validation, Funding acquisition, Conceptualization. Qiuzhao Zhang: Writing – review & editing, Writing – original draft. Runfa Tong: Writing – original draft, Data curation. Nanshan Zheng: Writing – review & editing. Axel Preusse: Writing – review & editing.

Declaration of competing interest

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Acknowledgement

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos. 52394193 and U22A20569) and the National Key R&D Program Projects (Nos. 2023YFC3804200 and 2023YFC3804205).

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