How do mine operators/managers/engineers know, days/weeks in advance, that a land slide is going to occur?
In: Engineering
A lot of instrumentation and technology! I don’t have any direct experience with this, but I did sit through a few related presentations while working at an open pit copper mine.
Land slides are not usually sudden events, and will have measureable indicators. Many are not visible to the human eye, but some are.
Our site used LIDAR (laser range finding) survey equipment to scan slopes, and track the amount of movement per day. It is basically a laser rangefinder that moves left and right, up and down taking measurements every couple of inches, and outputting a color coded LIDAR point cloud that represented day to day change as a color spectrum (red areas had a lot of movement, blue did not).
I believe they first used visual indicators, such as cracking, and other less comprehensive instrumentation to identify areas of concern. Then they used the LIDAR scanners to monitor change at those areas and predict when the major failures would occur.
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