The mining industry is growing and is a key global economic driver, providing raw materials for consumer and industrial products, being Europe one of the most demanding regions of raw materials. Mining operations relie on large scale, continuing, and safe operations in and around geological sites, but with repeated accidents and non-complete monitoring of how operations are impacting the terrain, the issue is far from resolved. Disasters occur, such as collapses of mining slopes, or ‘tailings dams’ with a release of chemicals leading to loss of life, interruption of mining operations and catastrophic environmental consequences: a collapse of a tailings dam may destroy natural drinking water and rivers for centuries. DARES, a European company formed by staff with multiple years’ of experience in the industrial remote monitoring field wish to change this. We have been developing and commercializing an industry leading satellite-based remote monitoring solution. Now we are adding Drone, Ground Radar and near-realtime processing to generate a complete wide area to local area monitoring and alerting solution. Called MOTIONMAPPER 2.0, it represents a ground-breaking solution to ensure safety of operations and to guarantee operational efficiency. We are in a unique position to do this. We have both the academic and industrial skill sets, as well as monitoring contracts with several large mines operating our satellite-based solution. Following a successful phase 1 feasibility study, we propose a two-year project to fund the complex technical work and commercial entry preparations. Generating a new product category in a sector with clear demand, we predict sales of 22M€ by 2022, growth to 55 employees and a substantial impact on the protection of the environment as well as the European Earth Monitoring sector and its technical expertise.

Several significant Industries rely on large scale, continuing, and fully safe operations in and around geological sites. These are the Mining, Construction and Oil & Gas Industries. With multiple accidents and non-complete monitoring of how their operations are impacting the terrain, the issue is far from resolved. Dares, a European company formed by staff with multiple years’ of experience in the industrial remote monitoring field wish to change this. We have an excellent satellite-based remote monitoring(inSAR) solution under development, now we wish to add Drone, Ground Radar and near realtime processing to generate the complete wide area to local area monitoring and alerting solution. We are in a unique position to do this. We have both the academic and industrial skill sets. Now we wish to confirm the possibilities in real detail, to validate our business case across all our markets. We propose the public launch of MotionMapper in parallel to this phase 1 project as a key milestone in our plans to execute a high-value business opportunity which has the clear capacity to greatly increase our sales, to capture further investment and to drive our rapid expansion.

The industry is facing surmounting challenges today, such as deeper mining, social license to operate, access to land, higher production rates, but at a lower cost and more challenging environments, both underground and on the surface. Innovative mining technologies, research and education are required through bridging of business, research, and education, to enable a sustainable, efficient, and successful mining industry now and in the future. MASTERMINE proposes a structural multilevel change for the mining operations, focusing on the top-down axis of Culture, Strategy and Tactics. Culture refers to the intrinsic change for the EU mines, to understand the value of digitalization and environmental sustainability We address the Strategy pillar for the mine, by designing high-level modules that address real industrial challenges. We lead the digital transformation of mines through CYBERMINE, we foster autonomous and electric operations along with smart monitoring and maintenance through AUTOMINE, we ensure safety and stability in critical structures using GEOMINE, in GREENMINE we enhance the environmental sustainability of the mines by improving energy consumption, air quality and GHG emissions, water savings and waste valorisation. In METAMINE, we build a virtual world for the EU mines, introducing the concept of the mining metaverse hosting all the technologies, along with Digital Twins and Business Intelligence to provide simulation and decision support. Finally, we make the EU mine OURMINE, by bringing the communities together, build trust around the sustainability compliance of the raw material and fostering social innovation. We are going to demonstrate our approach in 5 EU demo cases and one replication demo in South Africa. Our mining partners offer access to a total of 11 mines around Europe, producing 10 different raw materials, including 5 CRMs (Cobalt, Tungsten, Coking Coal, Phophate Rock and Platinum).

HERCULES brings together a multidisciplinary team crossing boundaries within technology, systems thinking and society to develop a step change in the understanding and monitoring capabilities of geohazards and in turn produce ground breaking new methods to boost the resilience of current infrastructure under changing climates. The programme will undertake fundamental research to ascertain the pathways and grow our capacity to assess and predict risks due to geohazards. The proposed study will employ a range of novel research approaches across multiple scales, from the macro-scale through to the micro scale including the integration of Earth Observation techniques, laboratory investigation and by investigating the ground behaviour at the scale of soil particles experimentally using tomography and numerical techniques such as the Discrete Element Method. Our approach is unique in that the design and implementation of the technology is informed not only through the combination of laboratory and field studies, data interpretation and numerical simulations, but also coproduced through consultation with the local community. We will use crowdsourced geographic information with real-time environmental data and models to provide a decision-making framework to be adapted to local needs for the monitoring and early-warning of geozahards to improve urban resilience. The goals of the project are to: i) exchange knowledge in a multidisciplinary environment between academia and industry; ii) develop new insights, approaches and technologies that support the needs of end-users to make both the built environment and infrastructure more resilient to the increasing threat of natural hazards due to the effect of a more variable climate; iii) train Early Stage Researches (ESRs) during their secondments between Institutions who will form the next generation of researchers leading academic and industrial technological developments in this field.

The Goldeneye project will implement a unique combination of remote sensing and positioning technologies, exploiting Earth observation and Earth GNSS data, together with data fusion and processing powered by data analytics and machine-learning algorithms. The platform will allow satellites, drones and in-situ sensors to collect high-resolution data of the entire mine, which can be processed and converted into actionable intelligence for safety, environmental monitoring and overall productivity, allowing more efficient exploration, extraction and closure. These tools will be demonstrated in 5 field trials in Germany, Bulgaria, Romania, Kosovo and Finland, creating a compelling value proposition for implementation across the mining industry value chain. The project has a duration of 3 years and an EC funding of €8.36M. The consortium includes a large industrial partner, 7 SMEs, 4 academic/research centres and 4 end-users, supported by a strong advisory board of experts in geosciences.