The city of TengZhou in ShangDong, China, is developing a surveillance system in coal mines that will wirelessly monitor safety conditions.
The network, which will use applications from Bridgesafe on an Altai network platform, will use wireless sensors and communications devices mounted on miner’s helmets to provide location information and direct communication with miners and to detect and report hazardous gasses.
The system, now under development, promises a real advance in improving mine safety but developing a mobile network mounted atop miners helmets that can meet the technological challenges of communicating through or around dense rock and mineral compounds is technologically challenging to say the least.
If effective, it would provide a much-needed safety lever for the mining industry. Just this month, seven miners died in a mine collapse in Vietnam. An explosion in a Chinese mine in December killed 18 miners and left 43 missing. Two tragic mining disasters topped headlines last year in the U.S. Rescuers resorted to drilling deep holes into a mountain in Utah last summer when a mine collapse trapped six miners there and two miners in West Virginia died in a mine collapse one year ago. Those incidents prompted a mine safety bill that is presently working its way through the U.S. Congress.
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