[Chair of Mining Engineering and Mineral Economics-the Future]. / Bergbaukunde, quo vadis?

In order to tackle climate change and increasing competition in access to resources, the European Union has defined far-reaching transformations in the areas of energy and digitalisation as well as the conversion of the economic system towards an inclusive, circular economy in the so-called Green Deal. From a mining perspective, these transformations mean a continued growing demand for raw materials, which must be met by extracting mineral raw materials from primary deposits. However, increased quantities with "business as usual" would also increase the environmental and social impacts of mining, which is not an option, especially in Europe and Austria.Due to these facts, there is a need for research on new and improved mining methods and planning, as well as on optimised processes and machinery. This article describes how the Chair of Mining Engineering and Mineral Economics at Montanuniversität Leoben intends to use these challenges as an opportunity with its updated strategy, both for research and for teaching. For the research area, sustainability and involvement in the shaping of raw materials policy should form the framework. With a focus on digitisation and underground mining as well as strengthening the areas of open-pit mining, conveying technology and geoinformatics, research is to be future-proofed for these upcoming transformations. Teaching will continue to include a basic engineering education with specialisation in mining, whereby digitalisation will play an increasingly strong role.

Exploring frame conflicts in the development of a new mineral resource policy in Austria using Q-methodology.

Mineral resource policy deals not only with industrial and trade aspects but is nowadays also increasingly concerned with topics such as environmental protection and social development. The tensions associated with strongly divergent opinions among various stakeholder groups cast it as a 'wicked problem'. The process of redeveloping the 'Austrian Mineral Resources Strategy' allows for examination of the different frames and identification of potential frame conflicts in consultation processes at the national level. Using Q-methodology, this paper reveals four frames represented in the Austrian policy design process and unravels conflicts between economy-focused and integrated policy framings. The predominance of the first frame indicates a narrow sectoral approach favouring domestic mineral extraction and economic growth over other means (e.g. international distributional conflicts of benefits and burdens). The article also demonstrates the suitability of Q-methodology as a tool to investigate frames and to improve their understanding in policy design processes.

Pangea: An MLOps Tool for Automatically Generating Infrastructure and Deploying Analytic Pipelines in Edge, Fog and Cloud Layers.

Development and operations (DevOps), artificial intelligence (AI), big data and edge-fog-cloud are disruptive technologies that may produce a radical transformation of the industry. Nevertheless, there are still major challenges to efficiently applying them in order to optimise productivity. Some of them are addressed in this article, concretely, with respect to the adequate management of information technology (IT) infrastructures for automated analysis processes in critical fields such as the mining industry. In this area, this paper presents a tool called Pangea aimed at automatically generating suitable execution environments for deploying analytic pipelines. These pipelines are decomposed into various steps to execute each one in the most suitable environment (edge, fog, cloud or on-premise) minimising latency and optimising the use of both hardware and software resources. Pangea is focused in three distinct objectives: (1) generating the required infrastructure if it does not previously exist; (2) provisioning it with the necessary requirements to run the pipelines (i.e., configuring each host operative system and software, install dependencies and download the code to execute); and (3) deploying the pipelines. In order to facilitate the use of the architecture, a representational state transfer application programming interface (REST API) is defined to interact with it. Therefore, in turn, a web client is proposed. Finally, it is worth noting that in addition to the production mode, a local development environment can be generated for testing and benchmarking purposes.

Prototype of Instrumented Rock Bolt for Continuous Monitoring of Roof Fall Hazard in Deep Underground Mines.

Roof falls are currently one of the most dangerous threats associated with underground mining at great depth. Every occurrence of such an event poses a significant risk to the mining crew and disturbs the continuity of the mining process, which clearly affects the economy of the exploitation process. The development of a reliable monitoring system may significantly reduce the impact of eventual roof failure and will have a positive effect on the sustainability of the extraction process. Within this research study, a prototype of an instrumented rock bolt developed for continuous stress measurement is presented. The procedure of a 4-groove multilevel instrumented rock bolt is described and the calibration process is shown. Then, preliminary results of long-term in situ monitoring are presented. Based on the continuous monitoring of stress distribution within immediate roof strata, it was concluded that the developed instrumented rock bolt provides reliable results and is a very useful device, ensuring the possibility of early warning for miners about increasing roof fall risk.

Application of Ultra-Wide Band Sensors in Mining.

Ultra-wideband (UWB) sensors are a radio frequency technology that use wireless communication between devices to precisely determine the position. The most recent applications focus on locating and sensor data collecting on mobile phones, car keys and other similar devices. However, this technology is still not being utilized in the mining sector. To overcome this gap, this perspective offers implementation options and solutions. Additionally, it evaluated the benefits and drawbacks of using ultra-wideband for mining. The measurements provided were made using QORVO two-way ranging sensors, and these were compared to theoretical and existing technological solutions. To ensure the optimal use of UWB sensors, a special emphasis was placed on certain influencing factors, such as ways of locating via UWB and factors affecting measurement accuracies, such as the line of sight, multipath propagation, the effect of shielding and the ideal measurement setup. A conducted experiment showed that the most accurate results are obtained when there is no multipath propagation and the arriving signal travels directly from the transmitter to the receiver.