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38 E&MJ; • JANUARY 2016 www.e-mj.com Staying Safe, by Keeping Track One of the more commonly expressed safe- ty goals of the global mining industry is to "get people out of the mine" through greater use of mechanization or other emerging technologies, such as tele- remote or autonomous control systems. It's a goal that's not always feasible, as a well- known African mining company recently found out (See "Lonmin Optimistic About Future," pp. 16-19, in this issue)—and even when it is, it's a transitional process that takes time. However, regardless of whether workforce numbers at any given operation are rising or falling, there's an ongoing need to keep track of workers on- site, for personal and site security reasons, recordkeeping and emergency response management. Two recent announcements highlight different ways in which recent technological advances are making this easier for employers—and employees. Vandrico Solutions, in collaboration with the SAP Co-Innovation Lab and Illumiti, announced the launch of the MineSafe Smartwatch. Vandrico is an Industrial IoT and wearables software company based in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. Illumiti is a systems integration and man- agement consulting company with offices in Canada, the U.S. and Switzerland. According to Vandrico, the MineSafe Smartwatch is a tool to help miners identi- fy and respond to potentially dangerous issues. The watch enables real-time com- munication between miners underground and personnel on the surface. The devel- opers claim that by using the Smartwatch system along with real-time data and analysis software, mining companies can quickly identify and predict potential haz- ards, notify employees of dangerous situa- tions, identify worker locations in an emer- gency, and provide safety guidance to workers in an automated fashion. The MineSafe Smartwatch combines proactive features that can enhance worker awareness of safety issues with immediate response features that can assist both min- ers and topside responders. "Our watch leverages Wi-Fi and sensors in the mine to provide mine workers with greater situational awareness, facilitate communications and accelerate evacua- tions," said Lorraine Howell, vice president of research and development for Illumiti. "Using our worker tracking feature, the mining company can quickly identify the location of each miner in real time from the surface during an emergency, enabling safety teams to quickly locate missing team members. Localized evacuation mes- sages can also be sent based on worker location in the mine." Some key features of the Smartwatch include: • Worker location tracking: Tracks individ- ual worker locations and enables regular check-ins. • Real-time incident reporting: Enables miners to report any injuries or safety in- cidents in real time to operators at the surface who can take immediate action. • Proactive real-time communications: Automatically send safety procedures to workers step by step—and record whether or not procedures were followed. • Automatic alerts: Using sensors set up within the mine, detects potentially haz- ardous conditions and alerts workers in the danger zone through audible, visual and vibrating alarms. "Mine workers can use a one-touch dis- tress call feature to send an urgent notice to the surface. The surface system is designed to send immediate alerts to key personnel and emergency responders based on the type of incident being report- ed, which can enhance response time and reduce risk to other workers," said Gonzalo Tudela, Vandrico CEO. The MineSafe Smartwatch uses Vandrico's Canary communications plat- form, which creates a mine-specific IoT across a Wi-Fi network using data from wearable devices and sensors placed throughout a mine. Canary is built on the SAP HANA platform, hosted either on premise or in the cloud, which allows the MineSafe Smartwatch application to lever- age real-time data analysis from a myriad of sources in order to identify emerging safety issues. As issues are identified, key personnel can use the Control Center func- tion within the application to locate miners and transmit solutions, alerts and evacua- tion protocols as necessary. In an August interview published by SAP on its Business Trends website, Ruediger Schroedter, global lead for mining at SAP, explained the basic problem that the MineSafe Smartwatch addresses. "There are a lot of manual steps currently neces- sary to trigger safety alerts. A worker detects a safety issue, notifies a safety officer (often by phone), and the information is processed before an alert is issued, and the alert (usu- ally stench gas) takes time to reach min- ers," Schroedter said. "This process can be faster and more efficient with sensors and electronic transmission. This will greatly reduce reaction time to safety concerns and make mines safer." In the same interview, Tudela said, "The biggest benefit of smartwatches in enter- prise is actually quite simple—contextual notifications. When compared to radios, tablets, and smartphones, the watch out- performs by a large degree. The device is always on the person and can be provide valuable insight to enhance real time oper- ational intelligence. "Smartwatches will help workers do their job in a safer, faster and more effective way. For example, the watch will immediately send personalized evacuation notices during dangerous situations, such as rock instabili- ty or fire," he added. "The watch also has safety checklists for miners that will prompt a worker as he/she begins to use a piece of machinery. The watch will send confirmation notices and ask if there are any issues to The MineSafe Smartwatch enables real-time communications and location tracking of personnel underground by managers/dispatchers on the surface. O P E R AT I N G S T R AT E G I E S