Associate professor Naj Aziz – who is also conference chairman – will be leading a presentation titled “Rockbolt corrosion – an experimental study”

Professor David Cliff, Minerals Industry Safety and Health Centre director – who is developing software to streamline underground emergency detection information retrieval processes – is chairing a technical session focusing on emergency management underground, and issues such as spontaneous combustion and remote monitoring of sub-surface heating in open cut coal mines.

Queensland Mine Safety and Health commissioner Stewart Bell will deliver a presentation on the Pike River Royal Commission outcomes.

Bell – who was also a Pike River Coal royal commissioner – is keen for the Australian industry to heed the safety lessons from the Pike tragedy, in which 29 miners perished.

The New Zealand government ordered a royal commission to investigate the tragedy and provide a report. It took over 12 months and cost $NZ10.5 million.

On the geotech front, Russell Frith will be presenting a paper on a holistic examination of the geotechnical design of longwall shields and associated mining risks.

This session will be co-chaired by Anglo American Metallurgical Coal geotechnical engineer Ismet Canbulat, who is also the chairman of the Bowen Basin Underground Geotechnical Society.

John Simmons is presenting on “CoalLog”, which has become a standard for collection, recording storage, and transfer of geological and geotechnical exploration data for the Australian coal industry.

A total of 35 out of 50 papers are to be presented over the two-day conference, covering underground and surface mining operations, Aziz said.

“There are several papers on longwall mining practices related to operational and geotechnical issues,” he said.

“These include papers on geotechnical roof classification, from borehole data including geophysical logging.”