CMC acquires Maptek Sentry for survey and monitoring at Portia Gold Mine

Consolidated Mining & Civil Pty Ltd (CMC) has acquired a Maptek Sentry monitoring system, primarily for use at Havilah Resources Limited’s Portia gold mine in South Australia.

The Sentry solution is an active monitoring system for tracking movement and notifying stakeholders about potentially unsafe areas of an open pit operation. A long range I-Site 8820 laser scanner and dedicated software help sites measure and analyse unpredictable wall movement.

The I-Site point cloud data which is used in the Sentry solution can also be processed and modelled for survey reconciliation, stockpile volumetrics, geological mapping and kinematic analysis. Sentry allows several areas to be monitored within a single scan extent. Animations, continual analysis and graphical reports provide comprehensive information for reviewing results to guide future monitoring.

CMC is responsible for removing all of the overburden and bringing the ore to the surface at the Portia gold mine which lies 100 km northwest of the Broken Hill regional mining centre. At Portia the gold occurs in a
2-3 metre layer below 75 metres of clay overburden (about 7 million cubic metres), which is being removed to access the ore.

At Portia the Sentry solution will be applied to track movement and stability of walls in the open pit. The I-Site laser scanner will also be used for routine survey applications throughout the operation. A rugged Maptek mountattaching the I-Site laser scanner to the roof of a site vehicle, gives CMC greater flexibility
for surveying large areas efficiently.

‘We went with Maptek for several reasons. Price, local support, ease of use and the combination of survey and monitoring applications makes the choice obvious’, said CMC Principal Steve Radford.

‘Prior to mining commencement we’ve remodelled and constructed 35 km of access roads and an airstrip as well as establishing infrastructure such as workers’ camp, on-site concrete batching plant and maintenance facilities.’

‘In remote environments where you need to ensure worker safety, Sentry provides a diagnostic tracking tool with clear visualisation and analysis capabilities so we can make reliable engineering decisions’ he said.

About CMC

The Consolidated Group of companies employs more than 450 people and owns and operates more than 700 items of plant in its general contracting business across Australia. CMC has a long term solid affiliation with the Broken Hill region in New South Wales, successfully conducting major earth moving contracts, specialising in open cut mining. Activities include contract crushing and screening, bulk haulage and open cut mining.

About Maptek

Founded more than 30 years ago, Maptek™ is a leading provider of innovative software, hardware and services for global mining. Maptek products are used at more than 1700 sites in 75 countries, with solutions across the mining cycle from exploration to reclamation. Vulcan™ is the premier 3D mine planning and modelling package.

I-Site™ is integrated hardware and software for 3D laser scanning, surveying and imaging. PerfectDig™ provides a platform for design conformance. BlastLogic™ is intelligent 3D drill and blast management software. The Eureka™ environment is ideal for visualising and interpreting geophysical and seismic data. Sentry is a laser-based system for identifying trends in surface movements. Evolution provides strategic and tactical scheduling and optimisation tools.

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OGC requests comment on draft charter for temporal standards working group

Members of the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC®) request comments on the draft charter for a proposed OGC Standards Working Group (SWG). The OGC Temporal Well Known Text (WKT) for Calendars Standards Working Group is being formed to adapt existing standards to provide the capability to represent and encode temporal metadata within data sets and protocols that use customised calendars.

OGC Members proposing the OGC Temporal WKT for Calendars Standards Working Group have identified a number of communities who use time representations based on calendars which are not the Gregorian calendar. In order to provide interoperable representations of this metadata, extensions to the current metadata standardisation provision in ISO 19162 (Well Known Text), and potentially in other associated standards, are required. This work will involve adaptations and extensions to existing OGC standards and to ISO standards developed in conjunction with the OGC.

A uniform standard for representing temporal metadata within data sets and protocols has particular business value for the Climate Science community, who make extensive use of such temporal representations. This standards work will also benefit the wide range of communities who are looking to make use of climate data to interact with their own data sets to facilitate further applications. The planned standardization effort will also support uniform communication about time in a very wide range of applications unrelated to climate.

The draft charter is available for review atportal.opengeospatial.org/files/64317. Comments should be sent via email to Email Contact and are due by 27 August, 2015.

The OGC is an international geospatial standards consortium of more than 510 companies, government agencies, research organizations, and universities participating in a consensus process to develop publicly available standards. OGC standards support interoperable solutions that "geo-enable" the Web, wireless and location-based services, and mainstream IT. Visit the OGC website at www.opengeospatial.org/contact.

Contact:
Email Contact

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Using Satellite Imagery to Track the Ocean’s Acidity

BY REBECCA MAXWELL



The Earth’s oceans play a vital role in the health of the planet. Ocean dynamics impact weather patterns, it provides food and recreational opportunities, and industry related to the ocean generates significant revenue. The ocean also serves a critical function in regards to easing global warming, and scientists are now using satellites in order to better understand the impact of carbon dioxide on the acidity of the ocean.

Seawater helps to combat global warming by absorbing some of the carbon dioxide that humans release into the atmosphere, mainly from the burning of fossil fuels. Instead of hovering in the atmosphere, about a quarter of greenhouse gases are soaked up by the ocean. When seawater does this, however, its acidity increases. Upsurges in acidity are causing some concern among scientists because of the potential effects on ocean life as well as the global economy.

According to the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the ocean’s surface pH has become 30 percent more acidic since the Industrial Revolution. The acidity of the ocean is not easy to measure nor is it evenly distributed. Plus, past attempts to monitor the pH balance of the ocean have involved research vessels and buoys which are expensive and unreliable.

This is where remote sensing comes in. Scientists are now using satellites in order to monitor large areas of the ocean and identify those that are most at risk from acidification. Researchers at the University of Exeter in the United Kingdom took it one step further, developing a map of the ocean’s acidity that displays which areas are most impacted.

To produce this map, researchers used satellite imagery from NASA’s Aquarius satellite as well as the European Space Agency’s Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity (SMOS) satellite. Thermal mounted cameras on the satellites measure the temperature of the ocean while microwave sensors measure its salinity. Both of these readings can then be employed to evaluate the acidity of the ocean over larger areas in a shorter amount of time than before.

The map created from satellite measurements displays how much the ocean varies in acidity. Areas that are reddish in color are more alkaline or basic, and this means that they have more room to absorb carbon dioxide floating in the atmosphere. It appears that open regions of the ocean are more resilient to becoming excessively acidic while coastal areas are more vulnerable. The northeastern U.S. is particularly susceptible, and this could have important consequences down the road.

THE MAP CREATED FROM SATELLITE MEASUREMENTS DISPLAYS HOW MUCH THE OCEAN VARIES IN ACIDITY. AREAS THAT ARE REDDISH IN COLOR ARE MORE ALKALINE OR BASIC, AND THIS MEANS THAT THEY HAVE MORE ROOM TO ABSORB CARBON DIOXIDE FLOATING IN THE ATMOSPHERE. IMAGE: IFREMER/ESA/CNES

Scientists are concerned about the increase in the ocean’s acidity because of the potential impacts on marine life. Higher acidity could make it more difficult for marine life to live. Acidification degrades the shells of oysters, mussels, and crabs. Baby oysters are already are disappearing from some areas, and the effects of this could be seen further up the food chain. There are also concerns about non-shelled marine life in that fish kept in acidic water act more skittish than those in normal seawater. Since the ocean is a major supplier of food, the monitoring of its acidity is more important than ever.

References:
Land, Peter E., Jamie D. Shutler, Helen Findlay, Fanny Girard-Ardhuin, Roberto Sabia, Nicolas Reul, Jean-Francois Piolle et al. “Salinity from space unlocks satellite-based assessment of ocean acidification.” Environmental science & technology (2015). Retrieved from: http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/es504849s

“Global Ocean Acidity Revealed in New Maps.” http://www.livescience.com/49831-maps-reveal-ocean-acidification.html

“Satellite Images Reveal Ocean Acidification from Space.”http://www.exeter.ac.uk/news/featurednews/title_435490_en.html

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Futura Systems, Inc. Named Top Vendor to Watch at 2015 Municipal Smart Grid Summit

Browser-based web GIS approach earns near-unanimous selection out of more than 50 vendors


Executives from municipal utilities at the 2015 Muni Smart Grid Summit on June 23 voted Futura Systems, Inc. the “Top Vendor to Watch” for its utility-wide web GIS solutions CatalystIQ and FieldPro.

Futura’s selection came after utility executives had a chance to examine each of more than fifty vendors’ offerings in intensive boardroom-style presentations and discussion.

“The ‘Vendor to Watch’ category recognizes companies bringing innovative and compelling solutions that are highly relevant to the needs of munis,” said Colin Martin, VP of sales and vendor participation for the Smart Grid Summit.

“While most municipal utilities are familiar with the concept of GIS, they often face challenges in integrating and analyzing data coming from multiple sources — metering (AMI), outage management system (OMS), billing records and customer information systems (CIS) — and from multiple brands of technologies,” said Adam Dinges, Futura Systems chief operating officer. “The browser-based web GIS approach is an innovation that really resonated with muni leaders.”

CatalystIQ and FieldPro are built on the industry-leading Esri platform and provide on-point data and analytics in an intuitive browser.
CatalystIQ brings together operational and business systems data from across the enterprise, displaying it spatially on maps showing locations within the electric system. Its analytics display in a dashboard form, where it can be saved by the user and shared as needed from the browser without having to access software installed at particular locations or machines.


FieldPro enables mobile crews to perform operations under any conditions, while maintaining data integrity and security. FieldPro is a native iOS application that can run in a connected or cached fashion. It can store information locally on an iPad and allows users to view system data, perform field inspections and work outages with data from OMS.

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Bluesky Announces Prototype UAV Flight Restriction Map

Aerial mapping company Bluesky has produced a prototype map of the UK showing where it may be unsafe or even illegal to fly Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), commonly referred to as Drones. Bluesky has combined an expertise in flight planning and 3D aerial mapping with various geographic datasets to come up with the concept of a UAV Flight Restriction Map.

The map is designed for commercial operators of UAVs and includes ‘No Fly Zones’, areas where further advice should be sought as well as areas where no restrictions on flying are currently in place.

“The UAV industry is rapidly expanding with new operators offering a wide range of services launching every day,” commented James Eddy, Technical Director at Leicestershire based Bluesky. “With nearly twenty years’ experience in planning large scale aerial surveys, combined with some of the most up to date and accurate geographic data and advanced processing techniques, we have been able to produce this prototype map. It is, however, designed just as a guide to where you can and cannot fly, so UAV operators should still check with the appropriate authorities.”

Currently operators of UAVs in the UK must comply with Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) regulations if they plan to undertake ‘aerial work’, while those equipped for data acquisition and or surveillance must obtain permission before ‘commencing a flight in a congested area or in proximity to people or property’. An overriding, all encompassing CAA Article also provides guidance in that a ‘person must not recklessly or negligently cause or permit an aircraft to endanger any person or property’, while other restrictions cover the dropping of articles or animals, minimum distances when flying near people or properties, and references to the Data Protection Act.

Bluesky’s UAV Flight Restriction Map is designed to provide a ‘first stop’ reference for commercial operators of UAVs in addition to CAA guidelines. The colour coded map uses a traffic light system to identify different zones: ‘No Fly Zones’ in red, areas close to no fly zones where further advice should be sought in amber, and ‘Free Fly’ zones in green. This easy to use resource takes into consideration population densities based on small scale postcode units, and congestion based on road location and type. The Bluesky UAV Restriction Map also considers the location and impact of aerial obstacles, such as overhead power lines, and restricted airspace including no fly zones around airports.

The launch of the prototype UAV Flight Restriction Map by Bluesky follows attempts around the world to develop control systems for commercial UAV, UAS (Unmanned Aerial System) or drone deployments. NASA, working with the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) with input from government, industry and academic partners, has recently announced plans to develop a UAS Traffic Management System (UTM) that will keep track of and communicate important information to UAS operators in real time.

Contacts:

Bluesky
tel +44 (0)1530 518 518
www.bluesky-world.com