With the challenge of tailing’s monitoring evolving as mining operations grapple with growing volumes of geotechnical, environmental and operational data, environmental risk management company Insight Terra is positioning its Insights Platform to integrate geotechnical, hydrological, environmental and operational data into a single real-time platform, while also applying to it a safety state logic.

Mining operations are increasingly needing to transform data collected from mining operations and tailings storage facilities (TSFs) to make better decisions and proactively address operational and safety risks as they arise.

Modern tailings monitoring technologies can collect and process data from various TSFs and mining areas, depending on the operator’s requirements. For instance, Insight Terra CEO Alastair Bovim highlights that mines can use a modern monitoring system that incorporates vibrating-wire piezometers for geotechnical monitoring, to test for pore pressure and stress factors.

Additionally, another key piece of equipment – satellite interferometric synthetic aperture radar – gives miners information on wide-area surface deformation trends, that enables for geotechnical decision making and for ensuring the safety of mine workers and other personnel.

The Insights Platform was showcased during a webinar on the subject of “From Data to accountability: The Next Era of Tailings Performance Management”. The July 21, 2026 webinar was hosted by software company Dassault Systèmes – GEOVIA.

The Insights Platform goes beyond simply raising an alarm when a threshold is met or new trend condition is created, changing the safety state of the monitored facility and informing the responsible personnel about recommended response actions. This is done while keeping an auditable record of what happened, the event’s time and date, and how it was actioned, which he says can also support daily operations at mine sites.

Further, with the Insights Platform, Bovim says that tailings deposition planning, water management and freeboard control could all be improved by amalgamating data of underlying measurements into a single trusted reference, enabling slope stability enhancement and the optimisation of dry-stacking and backfilling processes.

“That changes decision making at every level. The operator on shift gets clear, immediate guidance. The engineer of record sees how the facility is performing against design intent, continuously, not in periodic snapshots, and executives get portfolio-wide assurance that risk is being managed proactively, which is exactly what the Global Industry Standard on Tailings Management [GISTM] expects,” he explains.

With tailings compliance evolving to meet GISTM criteria, Bovim says such compliance has now become a continuous performance obligation that requires proactive and quantitative risk management, which the platform addresses on two levels: a monitoring level and a governance level.

At the monitoring level, he says the Insights Platform directly meets the GISTM’s core technical expectations of continuous performance monitoring of geotechnical, water and climate parameters, defined trigger levels that are linked to response plans, and traceable records of every alert and every action.

At the governance level, the Insights Platform’s Tailings Digital Platform can be used in conjunction with Dassault Systèmes’ GEOVIA software for enterprise GISTM compliance management through Insight Terra’s to undertake monitoring,” he explains.

Unlike individual readings from piezometers, inclinometers, survey instruments and balance measurements from different systems, the Insights Platform and monitoring technologies can significantly improve various mine tailings processes with automated and real-time data readings.

The Insights Platform covers three factors of tailings performance management that enable mines to evolve from data collection to managed risk intelligence. Firstly, the platform automatically unifies data from data provided by any sensor, logger, historian, laboratory system or satellite service with full traceability, converting raw signals into calibrated engineering values, says Bovim.

The second factor covered involves the Insights Platform’s rules engine automating interpretation and continuously evaluating conditions for accuracy on a predicted exceedance of physical storage limits, using forecasting, rate of change and trend testing metrics.

The third factor, he says, is governance, whereby the Insights Platform creates role-based workflows for properly allocating information to the responsible personnel.

“Data only improves safety if it drives accountable action. Role-based workflows put the right information in front of the right role, whether that is the TSF operator, the engineer of record or the accountable executive.”

Each safety state carries its own trigger action response plan and a full audit trail of alerts and responses.

Considering water is the single biggest controllable driver of tailings risk, Bovim says the Insights Platform can also test for water balance, which is calculated by the auditable engine, and provides the option of a built-in hydrological model, thereby enabling mining operations to proactively manage water risk.

Insight Terra’s nowcastr platform fuses weather radar, satellite observation and on-site sensor data to estimate the probability of extreme rainfall over an individual tailings facility in the hours ahead. Rather than a single forecast, it gives mine operators a calibrated probability of exceeding defined rainfall thresholds, such as the likelihood of intense rain over the catchment before the end of the shift, so response actions can start before the water arrives at the TSF.

“Wider earth observation products, such as optical and radar imagery for pond extent and change detection, extend coverage across the whole facility and its catchment at a fraction of the cost of dense ground networks,” explains Bovim.

The Insights Platform enables miners to adopt various future trends for tailings performance and geotechnical stability, including real-time monitoring and data collection for operational and safety decision making, and live engineering models for continuously updated indicators.