Booyco Electronics has developed its Missing Person Locator (MPL), an intelligent personnel tracking solution designed to strengthen underground emergency response and support compliance with evolving mine safety legislation.

According to Vashalen Naidoo, Electronic Engineer at proximity detection specialist Booyco Electronics, the MPL was developed to overcome critical limitations in traditional emergency response procedures.

“In the critical hour after an underground incident, such as a rockfall or fire, traditional manual roll-call systems can be too slow and are prone to human error,” Naidoo explains. “If communication infrastructure has been damaged, rescue teams are often left without accurate information about where personnel were last located.”

He notes that conventional tracking methods provide only limited location information and dependent on infrastructure.

“This creates an urgent operational need for an active high-frequency verification lifeline for miners,” he says. “The MPL uses a compact radio frequency (RF) transceiver integrated directly into each miner’s cap lamp.”

Fixed communication anchors installed throughout the underground workings continuously receive signals from the cap lamp devices, creating an accurate record of each miner’s location while enabling two-way communication between underground personnel and the surface control room through the mine’s communication infrastructure.

“The tags continuously broadcast location data through the underground network to provide an accurate log of every miner’s last known position,” Naidoo says. “Importantly, messages can be transmitted back to the miner’s cap lamp, allowing the miner to acknowledge the alert.”

A response confirms to the control room that the individual is responsive, while the absence of an acknowledgement could indicate that assistance may be required. This allows emergency responders to bypass time-consuming manual roll calls and proceed directly to the last recorded location of affected personnel, significantly improving the speed and effectiveness of rescue operations.

The importance of this capability has been reinforced by amendments to Chapter 16 of South Africa’s Mine Health and Safety Act (MHSA), which require underground mines to implement systems capable of locating missing workers. Booyco Electronics CEO Anton Lourens says this legislative requirement has been a key driver behind the company’s development of the MPL.

“The new requirement of the MHSA deals specifically with locating missing people in operations,” Lourens says. “Our MPL solution can either operate alongside an existing proximity detection system or function as a standalone system to meet that legal requirement.”

Beyond emergency response, the MPL also delivers operational value during routine mining activities. One practical application is during blasting cycles, when every worker must be accounted for before blasting can commence. While lamp room checks remain standard practice, Naidoo says the MPL provides an additional level of verification.

“It doesn’t replace the existing roll-call process during blasting, but it gives mines another level of confidence by minimising the possibility of human error and verifying that nobody remains underground before blasting begins,” he explains.

The system has been designed for flexible deployment across a wide range of underground mining environments. Depending on site requirements, it can integrate with existing mine communication infrastructure or be installed with its own dedicated communications backbone.

Lourens believes personnel location technology is becoming an increasingly important element of connected digital mine safety systems, with future developments extending well beyond post-incident location tracking.

“We see personnel tracking evolving from isolated, passive location systems towards a fully unified, predictive safety ecosystem,” he says. “By combining personnel location, machine telemetry and behavioural information with data analytics, mines will increasingly be able to identify risks hopefully before incidents occur. This could then evaluate worker wellbeing in real time and guide personnel along the safest evacuation routes during emergencies.”

Lourens concludes that the MPL strengthens Booyco Electronics’ broader approach to electronic mine safety.

“By enabling mines to find every person faster, we are reinforcing the core principle that no worker should ever be unaccounted for underground,” he says.