MINING SMARTER WITH AI AND DATA

AUSTRALIAN MINERS ARE HITTING A DATA WALL, FORCING A RAPID SHIFT FROM DISTANT CLOUD PROCESSING TO LOCAL EDGE COMPUTING TO DRIVE AUTONOMY, SAFETY AND IMPROVED ENVIRONMENTAL OUTCOMES.

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Modern mine sites are densely instrumented, with sensors and wearables generating vast data streams every minute. However, without robust connectivity, this information remains trapped in devices, unable to influence decisions on the ground in real time with the support of advanced artificial intelligence (AI) models.

A Tier 1 underground gold mine in Western Australia illustrates the operational gap between generating data and using it.

Traditional two-way radio tech struggled in the kilometres of subterranean tunnels, with blackspots throughout the mine and limited communication. The solution was a private LTE (4G) mobile network engineered by digital infrastructure specialist Vocus for the underground conditions.

This infrastructure offers predictable and consistent performance. It enables real-time tracking of vehicles and personnel, which has successfully cut hours of lost productivity associated with locating equipment as each new shift starts, and provided increased safety initiatives and management. It has improved above-ground operational visibility of what's happening deep below the surface.

The benefits extend to sustainability; granular visibility of where personnel are (and are not) has allowed the mine's operators to power down ventilation in unused areas, reducing energy use and emissions without compromising safety.

These sorts of solutions also help to drive improved safety controls above ground like tailings dam environmental monitoring.

The millisecond margin

The benefits are also significant to better communications on the surface.

Another Tier 1 miner is deploying 330-tonne autonomous road trains on a 150km private haul road in the Pilbara from inland pit to port. These vehicles use constant, low-latency data paths to operate safely at speed, demanding modern network architecture.