Development of GIS-based Evaluation Support System for Environmental Protection Against Coal Mining Subsidence

Abstract

Recently, underground coal mining has played an important role in supplying energy resources in most developing countries in Asia. As a result, the subsidence induced by underground coal mining has become a large environmental problem. In this paper, an evaluation support system is developed within a Geographic Information System (GIS) platform, including subsidence prediction and environmental impact assessment. The stochastic method is adopted to predict three-dimensional (3D) subsidence which consists of vertical displacement, tilt, curvature, horizontal displacement and horizontal strain. In addition, the model of the environmental impact assessment based on fuzzy logic is performed to identify building related subsidence damage classification. Furthermore, the developed system was applied to the coal mining planning in China in which the environmental impact such as buildings, railways, and rivers was predicted rigorously. The result of the prediction using the developed system demonstrates that the calculation time is approximately 100 times faster than that of the previously developed method. The developed system can be expected as effective and efficient tools to solve subsidence related environmental problems due to underground coal mining in developing countries.