Underground mining products and technology pioneer Strata Worldwide (SP Mine Safety) will, in the next 12 months, continue to develop its project at Black Rock mine, in South Africa’s Northern Cape, which will be the first ISO21815 collision avoidance system (CAS) roll-out in the country.

Strata Worldwide Africa GM Ian Cillie says Strata’s HazardAvert proximity detection system (PDS) and CAS increases the safety of people working around heavy machinery by proactively detecting potential accidents and providing early warning alerts.

He explains that Strata’s systems are electromagnetic, “making them effective in both surface and underground operations”.

Electromagnetic fields are not affected by light/darkness, inclement weather or dust and they easily penetrate rock, coal, man-made barriers, and other substrates to detect people and vehicles out of sight.

Strata’s PDS/CAS meets the requirements of EMESRT Level 9 and ISO21815, which means that they provide object detection, operator warning and automatic intervention, when necessary, in order to prevent an accident.

Additionally, Cillie said the company’s line of emergency refuge chambers are built for each customer per request and requirements.

“They are available in a variety of sizes and can be fitted with air and other supplies to last a client-specified duration of time. Structural and system upgrades are available including wheel and hitch packages, airlock entrance compartments, communication and camera systems, full atmospheric monitoring and gas detection systems,” Cillie notes.

He adds that the communication networks that Strata offers provides “unique and customized infrastructures that can be a tailored combination of wired and wireless systems”.

The company’s DigitalBRIDGE Plus+, for example, is a combined ethernet and leaky feeder backbone that provides high-speed digital data transfer and push-to-talk radio within the same network.

Mines can digitise new or existing very high frequency leaky feeder networks to accomplish power-over-ethernet (PoE) access for Internet-of-Things (IoT) field devices, cameras, Wi-Fi access points, tag readers, gas detectors and more.

These support live video streaming, voice over internet protocol, or VoIP, calling, remote monitoring and control, and real-time connectivity to emergency refuge chambers.

Inclusion of Strata’s IoT Gateway supports open standard Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and LoRa to provide wireless coverage of up to 2 000 m.

Additionally, through a partnership with Trolex, Strata offers a full array of leading-edge sensor and monitoring stations for gas monitoring and detection, atmospheric monitoring, dust monitoring and silica dust monitoring.

Strata’s products are geared towards the health and safety of people working in the mining industries of coal and hard-rock mining.