Modern Mining July 2020

TAILINGS MANAGEMENT

New era in tailings management and monitoring

To help mining companies improve data governance and transparency in their quest to achieve safer management of tailings storage facilities (TSFs), mobile satellite communications specialist, Inmarsat, has introduced its Tailings Insight, a new Internet of Things (IoT) solution for monitoring TSFs. With the launch of the solution, director of Mining Innovation at Inmarsat Joe Carr tells Munesu Shoko , the company is proving that technology exists today to enable a paradigm shift in safety across the industry.

N ew research by the Responsible Mining Foundation (RMF) reveals that more than a year after the Brumadinho tailings disaster in Brazil that killed 270 people, the mining industry is still dragging its heels on the step-change measures required to prevent such catastrophic tail- ings failures in the future. The recently-released RMI Report 2020 reveals that while investor-led action, triggered by the Brumadinho disaster, has resulted in improved trans- parency on companies’ TSFs, the vast majority of companies are still unable to demonstrate that they are reviewing how effectively they are managing

Joe Carr, director of Mining Innovation at Inmarsat.

TSF-related risks and taking responsive actions where necessary. At a time when the mining industry seeks to improve both data governance and transparency on

28  MODERN MINING  July 2020