Risk assessment in mining industry

Abstract

Mining is a hazardous operation and it involves considerable safety and health risk to the miners. Unsafe conditions in the surface and underground mines lead to a number of accidents/disasters, injury and loss to human lives. However, the hazards cannot be completely obliterated and thus there is need to define and reckon with an accident risk level possible to be presented in either quantitative or qualitative way. The traditional technique currently used in many circumstances does not give satisfactory results because the risk data are incomplete or uncertain. This article presents a risk assessment methodology for conducting systematic risk assessment using Fuzzy Reasoning Approach (FRA). The outcome of risk assessment through FRA will be represented as the risk degrees and the defined risk categories of risk levels (RLs) with a belief of percentage, which provide very useful risk information to decision makers. This will provide mining risk analyst, managers and engineers with a method and tool to conduct risk assessment with less time and effort.