MINE HEALTH AND SAFETY AND SECURITY
Mining operations often requires personnel to co-exist with explosives, highly toxic chemicals, heavy machinery in remote, harsh and hazardous (rock falls, explosions, fumes, gas …) operational environment. In order to maintain a high level of security, all personnel must be trained and hazardous and safety/security platforms must be custom designed to address Health, security and safety concerns.
At INAREC, we have a unique experience in dealing with remote and harsh operational environment. The founder of INAREC, Dr. Yassiah Bissiri, was the director of Penguin research center (www.penguinasi.com), an innovation company that produce automated tools for the mining Industry. As the research head of that company, he assembled and supervised high level teams of engineers that built “mining robots” with the sole purpose of safety and security for personnel.
Fig1. Pictured here is Dr. Yassiah Bissiri spending time with his “babies” at the penguin research center
So, in collaboration with PenguinAsi, CANADA and other international/national companies that are specialized on security and safety, INAREC proposes to build customized (safety + security = SS) platforms that are capable of virtually reproducing the five human senses and more through cameras, sensors … as described in Figure 2.
Once awarded with a safety and security project, INAREC take the following steps:
- A team of technicians is sent on site to gather specific data that are significant for the success of the implementation of the safety and security (SS) platform
- Data are processed and sent to the sourcing group that is composed of INAREC engineers/scientists/technicians and chosen consultants. Off the shelves technologies are used here.
- Once sourcing is completed, research is conducted in order to anticipate on the communication between equipment sourced.
- Finally our team of software experts work on the final package or INAREC SS BOX consisting of a platform that allows the sourced parts to “talk to each over” in order to deliver the required solution: Transmission of voice, high quality videos and significant amount of data needed to run mining operations.
- An additional provision can be taken to guarantee complete access of the platform from everywhere in the world.
Figure 2. The INAREC SS blackbox
New Internet Platform
However, transmission of voice, data and high quality video requires access to reasonable amount of internet bandwidth, which is difficult to achieve in remote locations in most African countries. An effective SS platform cannot be achieved without a good wireless system. Signal from fibers are ideal, unfortunately the infrastructure is not readily available in remote location
It is that difficulties that has motivated INAREC to look for solutions in order to resolve the bandwidth problem. Today we are glad to report that not only did INAREC successfully sourced the technology, but a partnership was concluded with the parent company owner of the technology, allowing the technology to be deployed on demand. The technology will be the subject of detailed elaboration in a separate proposal.
The characteristics of the link can be summarized below:
- The technology taps into existing fiber outlet and repeat itself every 20 km until it reaches the sites
- Fast to deploy, with a link install requiring less than 8 hours with trained personnel. It requires no digging or no unpredictable right-of-way agreements and charges, making it far more cost competitive than deploying alternate fiber routes.
- Its small form factor (13 KG) and low power consumption (60W) combined with a simple network daisy chain design allow it to be easily deployed with low operating costs
- offers a datarate of 20 Gbps
- ideal for crossing difficult terrain