Telecommunications giant MTN Business has teamed up with Digital Twin Mine Management to develop a home-grown hybrid Internet of Things (IoT) solution for South African mines.
The solution aims to leverage multiple platforms in the IoT ecosystem to improve health and safety and enhance the efficiency of South African mining operations, some of which are the deepest and most dangerous in the world.
“The mining industry is at the crossroads of significant technological changes. This solution will be a game changer that will transform old mining processes,” says MTN Business enterprise innovation acting GM and Enterprise IoT head Melao Mashale.
Technology continues to be a powerful tool to improve mine safety, which is in the spotlight after more than 50 fatalities were recorded in South Africa’s mines so far this year, following 88 fatalities in 2017, the highest rate in a decade.
The industrial IoT system, using multiple layers in the IoT ecosystem, including sensors, connectivity, cognitive computing and analytics, provides data and context to build a complete picture of the mining environment to monitor factors such as air flow, temperature, smoke, gas and emissions levels, groundwater levels, seismic activity, displacements and the location of miners and equipment.
The data will be obtained remotely through sensors installed at strategic locations throughout the mine and transmitted through MTN’s private long-term evolution narrowband IoT and other near-field networks, such as WiFi.
“In addition to monitoring and detection, this solution helps save lives by [enabling] operators . . . to automate heavy equipment in dangerous locations and send evacuation alerts to employees in unsafe environments and speed up search and rescue operations,” he says.