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In recent years the number of tailings dams failures has increased. On 25 January 2019, the Brumadinho tailings dam in Brazil suddenly failed releasing a mudflow over 10 m deep comprising some 10 million m3 of mining waste which killed between 270 and 320 people. This paper details the use of an agent-based model, known as the Life Safety Model (LS...
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... dams is high, owing to inadequate design regulations, as well as less rigorous construction and supervision methods than for normal water-retaining dams, especially in low-income countries (Bowker and Chambers, 2017). There are three principal methods via which tailings dams are constructed: upstream, downstream and centreline. These are shown in Fig. 1. The upstream method has the lowest initial cost, owing to the minimal amount of fill material required for the initial construction and subsequent raising, which normally consists entirely of the coarse fraction of the tailings (Martin and McRoberts, 1999). Martin and McRoberts (1999) describe upstream tailings dams as "unforgiving ...
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... results of the LSM model indicated that with no warning there would 456 fatalities out of the 502 people assumed to be at risk, a 91 % fatality rate; with a warning at the exact time the dam failed there would have been 354 fatalities. Figure 11 shows the distribution of the fatalities and the status of the people at risk for the representation of the January 2019 disaster with no warning. The diameter of each circle in Fig. 11 is in proportion to the number of people at each of the specific locations. ...
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... out of the 502 people assumed to be at risk, a 91 % fatality rate; with a warning at the exact time the dam failed there would have been 354 fatalities. Figure 11 shows the distribution of the fatalities and the status of the people at risk for the representation of the January 2019 disaster with no warning. The diameter of each circle in Fig. 11 is in proportion to the number of people at each of the specific locations. The actual event is probably best represented by a combination of a no-warning scenario on the mining site and a warning at the time of breach because the people in the villages further downstream became aware of the disaster without an official warning, and ...
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... risk can be represented by "F -N curves", which are plots of the cumulative frequency (F ) or probability of various accident scenarios occurring against the number (N) of fatalities associated with the modelled incidents (HSE, 2009). Figure 12 shows four F -N curves for the acceptable societal risk for dam failures and major accidents in Australia, the UK and the USA. Given that the annual probability of failure of a tailings dam is approximately 1 × 10 −2 and that when these structures do fail they often lead to at least one direct or indirect fatality, it can be seen that the risks they pose to society are "unacceptable" and "intolerable". ...
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... Brazil and in many other countries emergency plans for tailings dam are often not a high priority. The inadequate planning for the 2015 Bento Rodrigues tailings dam disaster, included the absence of response planning and the lack of an effective alarm system, as well as no quantitative or Figure 12. Graphs showing the acceptable risk in terms of the annual probability of failure and loss of life for dams in Australia and the USA and major hazards in the UK (sources: ANCOLD, 2003;NSW Department of Planning, 2011;USACE, 2011). ...
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In recent years the number of tailings dams failures has increased. On 25 January 2019, the Brumadinho tailings dam in Brazil suddenly failed, releasing a mudflow over 10 m deep comprising some 107 m3 of mining waste which killed between 270 and 320 people. This paper details the use of an agent-based model, known as the Life Safety Model (LSM), to...
Citations
The Life Safety Model (LSM) is an agent-based model used to estimate the loss of life in catastrophic flooding. By using the agent-based model concept, LSM is able to integrate the 2D hydraulic model with the agents, leading to the ‘fate’ of the agents. The results from the LSM simulation can be used to support evacuation planning, especially at the community level. In this study, the approach of LSM can identify the factors contributing to the loss of life through the simulation of various cases in the study area. From the simulation, the results show that timely flood warning dissemination, delayed response time and safe location play an important factor in reducing the number of fatalities. When there is sufficient warning time provided, People at Risk (PAR) can evacuate to a safe location within the time provided together with the quick response from PAR itself. However, in some situations, a delay in response time can reduce the number of fatalities. Along with the timely warning, the safe location needs to be suitable and can be reached by populations in the shortest time.
Dams, embankments, roads, and other structures are subject to stress changes due to pore pressure, which can lead to instability and even failure. Considering the need to understand the processes that act on these structures and the difficulty often encountered by students in visualizing the action of water and its movement in the soil, this paper aims to present the practical activities developed in the Soil Mechanics Department of the Civil Engineering Course of the State University of Minas Gerais - João Monlevade, Brazil, which dealt with the movement of water in soil structures and discussed the design and stability aspects of these. One of objectives was to develop the student's protagonism through direct involvement in the design and execution of the physical model of earth and tailing dams. This topic is crucial for geotechnical engineering and even more so for the region where João Monlevade is located, as several iron mining companies use tailings dams and earth structures. The execution of the model by the students was preceded by theoretical discussions on aspects such as the Darcy´s law, hydraulic head, the types and characterization of soil and tailings, pore pressure and your influence of the safety factor. These activities were developed in 2018, 2019, 2022 and 2023. As a result, a learning gain was achieved because the models were developed on a small scale by the students, who personally checked the variation of the parameters of the materials and water in the experiments.
In this editorial, I have chosen to reflect briefly on three catastrophic cases of flooding and consequential impacts following the failure of dams.
The full text is published as an open access document on the journal website. https://doi.org/10.1111/jfr3.12960
In the dam industry, safety and environmental aspects are crucial beyond production goals. By monitoring landslides associated with the construction of a hydro-power dam in the Santa Cruz River in the Argentine Patagonia, this paper contributes to the assessment of the project safety. Ground deformation is monitored using SAR satellite data and the Persistent Scatterer Interferometry technique, and contrasted with optical imagery, geological and technical reports and fieldwork. The results include maps of accumulated deformation and deformation time series for the locations of the anchorages of the dam, providing a new and independent dataset to assess the dam work integrity.
