Assessment and management of roof fall risks in underground coal mines

2004-01-01
Düzgün, Hafize Şebnem
Einstein, HH
Accidents caused by roof falls are commonly faced problems of underground coal mines. These accidents may have detrimental effects on workers in the form of injury, disability or fatality as well as mining company due to downtimes, interruptions in the mining operations, equipment breakdowns, etc. This study proposes a risk and decision analysis methodology for the assessment and management of risk associated with mine roof falls in underground coal mines. In the proposed methodology, risk assessment requires the determination of probabilities, possible consequences and cost of consequences. Then the risk is managed by the application of decision-making principles. The probabilities are determined by the analysis of 1141 roof fall data from 12 underground mines in the Appalachian region. The consequences are assessed based on the type of injuries observed after roof falls and the place of the mining activity. The cost of consequences is modeled by the so-called "relative cost criterion". A decision analysis framework is developed in order to manage the evaluated risk for a single mine. Then this model is extended to a regional model for the management of the roof fall risks in the mines of whole Appalachia. The proposed model is illustrated with an example and it is found to be a powerful technique for coping with uncertainties and the management of roof fall risks.

Suggestions

Analysis of roof fall hazards and risk assessment for Zonguldak coal basin underground mines
Düzgün, Hafize Şebnem (Elsevier BV, 2005-10-17)
The roof fall hazards are frequent problems of underground coal mines, which are generally unpredictable due to the associated uncertainties. These uncertainties, which arise from geological and stress conditions and mine environment, make the control of roof fall hazards difficult in underground coal mines. The most efficient method for coping with uncertainties in roof fall hazards is the use of risk assessment techniques. In this study, a risk assessment and management methodology is proposed for roof fa...
Predicting the outcome of construction incidents
Ayhan, Bilal Umut; Tokdemir, Onur Behzat (Elsevier BV, 2019-03-01)
Ensuring the Occupational Health and Safety (OHS) is the utmost essential issue for all construction projects. The problem with the construction industry is that even though there is a significant emphasis on safety requirements, for most of the contractors unless requested by the client or enforced by law, there is a tendency to undermine safety management to save money especially in the case of competitive bidding including incident collection systems. The objective of this study is to develop a model to ...
Analysis and modelling for risk management for underground coal mines’ safety
Eratak, Özlem Deniz; Karpuz, Celal; Department of Mining Engineering (2014)
Safety in underground coal mining has become an important issue because of increasing number of accidents. There are many different hazards may cause these accidents and the most efficient method for coping with risks is the use of risk management techniques. In this thesis, accident data including workday losses, age of the injured, organ affected by accident, season, shift and reason of the accident was collected from TKI mines (ELI- Soma Eynez and GLI Tuncbilek) and TTK mines. Those variables were initia...
Renovation of a safety-inspection methodology for river bridges
Yanmaz, Ali Melih; Caner, Alp (American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), 2007-09-21)
River bridges and related infrastructural elements need to be monitored and inspected periodically for deterioration and loss of function due to aging, adverse hydraulic conditions, and chemical attacks. Necessary protective works and related actions should then be implemented to increase safety. Types of items to be inspected would be categorized as structural, geotechnical, hydraulic, and structural material conditions. Requirements for periodic inspections and the ways of handling these activities were d...
Risk assessment and accident forecasting for an underground coal mine
Mevsim, Merve; Karpuz, Celal; Department of Mining Engineering (2018)
In Turkey, underground coal mine accidents are commonly faced problems and cause loss of lives and money. In order to prevent these accidents, the hazards and risks specific to each mine should be assessed by both ordering the risk scores and building a statistical model for the future trend of accidents. In this study, past accident records of Üzülmez District of Turkish Hard Coal Enterprises is utilized. The risk scoring model is built by using Riskex Risk Score Calculator based on Fine-Kinney risk score ...
Citation Formats
H. Ş. Düzgün and H. Einstein, “Assessment and management of roof fall risks in underground coal mines,” SAFETY SCIENCE, pp. 23–41, 2004, Accessed: 00, 2020. [Online]. Available: https://hdl.handle.net/11511/56500.