Understanding Seismic Hazards Associated with Development Mining: The Role of Local Geology and Structures

A major challenge in deep and high stress mining is managing seismic risk associated with blasting of production stopes and drift development to access the ore zones. The location, magnitude, and frequency of occurrence of seismic events are influenced by changes in stress, lithology, structure, and mining sequence rock properties such as brittleness. Mining induced seismicity can have significant safety and economic consequences for a mining operation.This paper presents a methodology for quantifying and integrating the influence of geological and structural characteristics to provide an improved understanding of the seismic hazards associated with drift development blasts. The method is based on multivariate statistics using a factor analysis of mixed data (FAMD) approach. It was demonstrated that specific geological and structural variables, at each drift segment, are correlated to the intensity of seismic responses to development blasting. A greater understanding of the critical factors provides a greater confidence in managing of seismicity. A further significant benefit is that the FAMD results can be used to prioritize the data collection for geological characterization to improve our understanding of seismic response after development blasts. This can be fully integrated in a cost benefit analysis that is critical for seismic risk management.