From Barrick Gold's latest issue of Beyond Borders:
Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are one of the newest technological tools being adopted by the mining industry to survey mine properties. Gone are the days of the lone surveyor, armed with a GPS device, driving across rugged mine property for hours to mark mining activities. Now a UAV with the right camera and data processing software can take pictures and provide better data, faster.
At the Barrick-operated Pueblo Viejo gold mine in the Dominican Republic, a small fixed wing UAV, the SenseFly eBee, can survey a mine area of 450 hectares, the size of 750 football fields, in four hours. The UAV collects survey data from pre-marked ground control points using GPS technology. The resulting "orthophotos" provide rich detail of all exposed surfaces in pits, quarries and stockpiles. They also help track the stability, construction and volume of materials within tailings storage facilities. They even account for the curvature of the Earth's surface and correct distortion for digital maps to reflect distances more accurately. These activities strengthen already robust on-site monitoring activities and provide greater detail than traditional tracking methods.
With further processing, the orthophotos will provide a 3-D model of the area surveyed, allowing the surveyors to better calculate ore and other material volumes and track changes in three dimensions.
Case in point: Pueblo Viejo processes up to nine different types of ore, but lacks the space to stockpile them separately. Hence, different ores are stacked on top of each other. While that may seem like grounds for a mix-up, the three-dimensional models produced by the UAVs can distinguish between the stockpiles, ensuring that the right mix of ore is sent to the mill at the right time.
Click here to read the entire article on the Barrick website.
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