A University of Calgary researcher is on a mission to increase mine safety globally by developing an advanced monitoring system that allows mine operators to ‘see’ how tailings dams are performing before problems occur.
The novel approach has earned Dr. Susanne Ouellet a Mitacs Innovation Award — Outstanding Innovation. Mitacs connects businesses and researchers to drive competitiveness and productivity in sectors such as energy, mining, agriculture, advanced manufacturing and artificial intelligence.
Dr. Ouellet — a University of Calgary postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Earth, Energy and Environment under the supervision of Professor Jan Dettmer — is being recognized for her work to develop a state-of-the-art monitoring solution that uses distributed acoustic sensing (DAS) technology.
The technology turns industry-standard fibre optic cables into a series of highly sensitive sensors capable of detecting changes in strain, temperature and seismic disturbances in tailings dams, the earth-fill embankment dams used to store mining waste. Once installed, the cable sends information in real-time so geotechnical engineers can learn more about where and when problems are occurring.
Dr. Ouellet’s ideas are based in part on her discovery about landslides, where she used DAS to reveal previously unknown slope failure mechanisms, which can be applied towards monitoring slope stability in dams. Her approach combines these findings with passive seismic techniques to monitor the interior dam structure, aiming to provide geotechnical engineers with new insights into how a tailings dam is performing.
“Right now, we can use this technology to understand how the performance of a dam is changing over time but what I’m most excited about is working towards integrating it into an operational tailings dam monitoring system to support data-driven decision-making,” Dr. Ouellet said in a media statement.
As part of her Mitacs-funded project, which was supported by the government of Alberta, Dr. Ouellet collaborated with enterprise partners Vancouver-based BGC Engineering and Virginia-based Luna OptaSense. She also worked with researchers at the British Geological Survey, which provided the pivotal landslide dataset that enabled her to identify never-before-seen strain changes in slope failure processes.
After installing a DAS system at a mine in Saskatchewan as part of her Mitacs project, Dr. Ouellet is now working to enhance the technology through Lumidas, including the development of a software dashboard that will make it easier for end-users to work with fibre optic sensing data.
She recently launched cleantech startup Lumidas to commercialize her technology. The award was presented at a ceremony at the National Arts Centre in Ottawa on November 19.