The future of underground spatial planning and the resulting potential risks from the point of view of mining subsidence engineering

Abstract

The topic of ground movements in Germany has been studied extensively in the past, especially in the field of active mines. The active hard coal mines in Germany were finally shut down in 2018 and lignite mining is expected to take place only until 2038. The so-called long-term liabilities of the mine operators in Germany include, among other things, the long-term guarantee of stability and thus the monitoring of ground motion. So far, the economic use of underground mining in Germany was mainly the supply of raw materials. In the future, the underground storage of compressed air, methane or hydrogen will play an important role in renewable energy supply and climate change. Therefore, the underground storage space will become more important and the spatial planning is essential to ensure availability of safe underground openings for the various options of environmentally friendly energy storage. However, this renewed usage of underground openings may also bring new and sometimes unknown challenges of geomechanical influence. The aftermath of hard coal and lignite mining will be an increasing challenge in mining subsidence engineering. On the other hand, new possibilities due to underground spatial planning may lead to subsidence and/or heaving of the upper surface.