Johannesburg Branch Event: Tailings Storage Facility monitoring – from the ground up

Tailings Storage Facility monitoring – from the ground up
By Dr Nicolaas C Steenkamp

Date: 17 February 2022
Venue: Zoom
Time: 17:00 – 18:30

About the presentation:
Tailings Storage Facilities (TSF) remains a hot topic in the industry as the GISTM process moves closer to completion. To date companies that operate TSF sites were allowed to use their own discretion in classifying the risk of their TSF operations. The monitoring and reporting is performed by geotechnical engineers performing regular in-loco investigations and reports. Their observations are supported by an increasing number of active and passive ground monitoring methods, both tried and test, but also a number of proof-of-concept approaches. Enhanced observations and overviews are done by drones and supported by satellite imagery. Huge advances have also been made in capturing all this information in a central dashboard that consolidate all the information allowing the responsible parties to both report and investigate the potential of failures. This presentation provides a high level overview of the most relevant activities currently being undertaken in the field to monitor and generate alerts of potential.

The speaker, Dr Nicolaas C Steenkamp
Dr Nicolaas C Steenkamp obtained in PhD in Geology from the University of Pretoria. He is registered professional natural scientist with SACNASP and a fellow of the Geological Society of South African and member of SAIMM. He is also part of the SAMREC/SAMVAL working group. Nicolaas as over two decades of industry experience, ranging from geological, mineralogical and geotechnical investigations to remote sensing applications. He also has an extensive project and contractor management background. Over the course of his career he has worked on a number of tailings storage facility (TSF) sites in South Africa and Africa and have presented on the topic at conferences and published articles on the topic