Environment
Sphiwe Emmanuel EMMANUEL Mhlongo; Francis Amphose Dacosta; Armstrong Kadyamatimba; George O Akintola
Abstract
South Africa has 6100 documented abandoned mines. The government is responsible for the management and rehabilitation of these mines to address their environmental problems, physical hazards, and socio-economic issues. In general, rehabilitating abandoned mines involves making a series of critical decisions ...
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South Africa has 6100 documented abandoned mines. The government is responsible for the management and rehabilitation of these mines to address their environmental problems, physical hazards, and socio-economic issues. In general, rehabilitating abandoned mines involves making a series of critical decisions about the strategies to be implemented in rehabilitating the major features of these mines. This paper presents an expert system developed to aid in selecting appropriate strategies for rehabilitating abandoned mines in South Africa. This system is known as the Expert System for Selection of Strategies for Rehabilitation of Abandoned Mines (ES-SRSA). The ES-Builder (Version 3.0, McGoo software) was used to design the knowledge and rule-based components of the expert system. The rules of the expert systems were developed based on the documented knowledge of the problems of abandoned mines in South Africa and the information gathered by the researcher through visits to selected abandoned mine sites in the country. The ES-SRSA provides 45 recommendations of suitable strategies for dealing with the different problems of features such as underground entries, mine waste, surface mine excavations, silos and orebins, and other features like dilapidated buildings/infrastructure. Most of the rules of this expert system encourage the repurposing and reuse of these mine features to improve the social and economic status of the host communities. The use of this expert system has the potential of contributing to the reduction of the risks of implementation of ineffective strategies for the rehabilitation of abandoned mines in a country like South Africa.
Debasmita Basu; Smriti Mishra
Abstract
Although mine closure problems have been researched in the past, little to no research has been dedicated to the post-reclamation impacts of abandoned mine closure. Even though reclamation has been an age-old identified technique, stakeholders’ perception has played an important role in defining ...
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Although mine closure problems have been researched in the past, little to no research has been dedicated to the post-reclamation impacts of abandoned mine closure. Even though reclamation has been an age-old identified technique, stakeholders’ perception has played an important role in defining the implementation procedure. Therefore, this study intends to identify the various implementation procedures through a rigorous literature assessment of 112 publications, identified from various sources. Theoretical and practical complications have been identified in the fields of environmental, socio-cultural and economic impacts of mine closure. The study unveiled that the most implemented reclamation strategy was intensive and non-intensive recreation/tourism-based reclamation techniques. Thus the study paves the way for the incorporation of an interdisciplinary strategy through cooperation between various stakeholders and research fields for the long-term viability of a mining site restoration.
