Satellite telecommunications company Inmarsat, with its collaborator engineering consultant Knight Piésold UK, won London-based industry publication Mining Magazine’s 2019 Editor’s Award for their innovative tailings dam monitoring solution, last month.

The award celebrates companies that have been particularly innovative over the past year.

Inmarsat – which has offices worldwide, including a South African office in Cape Town – teamed up with Knight Piésold UK to develop the award-winning solution, which allows mining companies to remotely monitor tailings dams in real time, thereby supporting independent analysis from auditors to guide critical decision-making. The collaboration reportedly presents a “new approach” on auditing and managing tailings dams.

Inmarsat’s solution collects data from a range of industry-standard sensors using edge connectivity networks, such as ‘long-range wide area network, before it is transferred across Inmarsat’s “highly reliable” L-band satellite network to a single cloud dashboard.

This enables mining companies and other appropriate stakeholders to gain a comprehensive view of the status of their dams with detailed metrics such as pond elevation, piezometric pressures, inclinometer readings and weather conditions displayed using one platform, regardless of where the mine is located.

The solution, developed in the wake of the Brumadinho tailings disaster, can be used for various tailings storage facilities, including at gold tailings operations.

Commenting on the award-wining collaboration Inmarsat mining innovation director Joe Carr notes that the company is “thrilled that [our] tailings dam monitoring solution has been recognised with the Mining Magazine 2019 Editor’s Award.”

Mine tailings audits are typically carried out at infrequent intervals, with employees and third-party consultants completing long-distance trips to collect data and audit the status of the dams.

“Our solution makes data available between site visits to any accredited user, anywhere in the world. In this way, we support the mining industry’s commitment to zero harm, [while] enabling our customers to minimise environmental risk and achieve high levels of safety and operational success,” explains Carr.

“This award is a great validation of our efforts to be at the forefront of the latest mining industry innovation,” adds Knight Piésold UK director Richard Elmer.

He comments that Inmarsat has an “unrivalled” track record of operating the world’s most reliable and secure commercial satellite networks for more than 40 years.

Elmer adds that Knight Piésold UK’s collaboration with Inmarsat enables its clients to gain access to the “latest and best” available technology for real-time data collection and analysis.

At the time, Mining Magazine editor Nia Kajastie explained that each year the editorial team chose a company, group, technology or project that had been particularly innovative over the presiding 12 months.

She noted that the award acted as recognition of how Inmarsat and Knight Piésold’s tailings dam monitoring solution was helping the mining industry to address some of its key challenges.

“With the global regulatory landscape becoming even stricter, cutting-edge technology will be playing an even bigger role in ensuring full compliance. Inmarsat’s tailings dam monitoring solution is leading the way in the right direction,” Carr concludes.