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Nottingham. UK, 24 September 2013 – An integrated mine monitoring system is helping the Debswana Diamond Company contribute more than 70 per cent of Botswana’s export earnings. Purchased from 3D 
Laser Mapping, SiteMonitor is a slope monitoring solution comprising a laser scanner and powerful monitoring software. The system is being deployed at the company’s Orapa mine 240 km west of Botswana’s second largest city Francistown. The integrated system is being used to monitor slopes of the open pit diamond mine where it will help mitigate the risk of slope failure.
The SiteMonitor system augments the existing monitoring programme as it is able to monitor slopes draped with wire mesh, which has been a challenge for other systems. The SiteMonitor system will initially be deployed at Orapa mine and is expected to be rolled out across other Debswana operations.
“We use wire mesh to reduce the risk of falling rocks,” commented Naani Mphathiwa, Survey Manager at Debswana Diamond Company. “However when monitoring slopes are draped with wire mesh the current radar system detects vibrations and expansion in the wire and that can be interpreted as slope movements. This results in a lot of false alarms.”
“The team at 3D Laser Mapping were very supportive during all stages of the system selection and delivery,” concluded Mphathiwa. “They answered all our enquiries promptly, and in full and were consistent with their delivery schedule and specifications.”
“The SiteMonitor system uses a measuring technique known as ‘waveform principle’ whereby the laser scanner issues multiple pulses to the target. Where there are several objects within the travel path multiple echoes are measured and processed. This allows us to measure through the wire mesh to the target wall without raising false alarms,” continued Mphathiwa.
The monitoring solution being implemented by Debswana was developed by SiteMonitor Systems and includes SiteMonitor, a state of the art laser monitoring solution. SiteMonitor is a modular system that gives the user the ability to exploit the potential of laser scanning for measuring change and improving mine safety. SiteMonitor is typically used in open pit mines for the continuous or periodic stability monitoring of unstable high walls.
Debswana’s system also includes an ultra-long range, high speed laser scanner which offers superior and unrivalled long range performance at distances of up to 4,000 metres. The laser scanner utilises unique echo digitisation and online waveform analysis to achieve superior performance and accuracies of measurement, even under adverse operating conditions and demanding multi target situations caused by dust, haze, rain, snow, etc. which are frequently found in difficult environments such as mine sites. Achieving accuracies of up to 5mm, it can measure up to 222,000 points per second with a 100 x 360-degree field of view.
