Review articleIoT Based information and communication system for enhancing underground mines safety and productivity: Genesis, taxonomy and open issues
Introduction
Mining is one of the earliest endeavours of humankind succeeding agriculture. These two industries are fundamental and vital for the prosperity of human civilisation. However, little has changed in the significance of these industries since the beginning of our civilisation. The extraction of the ores through mining still remains the essential resources for the modern civilisation [1], [2]. An ore is a rock with economic significance for the human civilisation. It contains sufficient minerals that can be converted into a saleable product which generates a financially acceptable profit under existing economic conditions [3].
India has a vast resource of deep-seated coal deposits, which can only be exploited by underground mining without impacting much on the environment. Mining of deep-seated coal deposits are carried out across various coal seams (layers) using the board and pillar method. After a particular seam is mined, a significant amount of coal remains untapped in pillars. Safe extraction of locked coal in pillars (depillaring) is only possible by effective roof control and proper support design. Accident due to roof collapse (strata movement) in underground coal mines had been a major concern for the mining industry and its most substantial contributing factor to underground coal mine accident. Continuous efforts were being made by the stakeholders to reduce the hazard of strata movement. To minimise strata movement, monitoring of strata and proper design of support system based on the investigations of geomechanical properties of overlying strata in underground coal mine is very essential. The implementation of novel systems and adoption of improvised equipment in mines can result in enhanced productivity and improved worker safety [4].
One of the primary objectives of the paper is to explore application of information technology and automation in mining industry for improving safety and productivity in mines. The paper has provided an insight of adaptation of digital technologies like the Internet of Things (IoT) [5] in the underground mines for implementing an effective communication and data collection technology so as to enable quick decision making process in mining industry at various levels both in underground and at surface. Various sensors for real-time monitoring of underground mine environment (such as temperature, humidity, poisonous and noxious gases) including remote monitoring of mining operations (such as machine health and maintenance, drilling intelligence and control, continuous minor teleoperations, roof convergence and strata load monitoring) are positioned inside the underground mines, playing a significant role in the modern mining [6]. IoT technology can be effectively used to transfer the data generated by these sensors in the underground mines to the cloud storage for further processing and event generation. This could result in enhanced productivity and safety of the workers by generating knowledge from those data [7], [8]. Following are some of the foreseen benefits of IoT in the mining industry:
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Time savings through real-time data and analytics: The real-time data can be visualized using visualization tools by the pit controllers, geologists, drilling/blasting teams, mine planners, and supervisors. It enhances the overall productivity in decision making and time to react to a particular situation.
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Predictive maintenance: The vast amount of data collected by the IoT nodes can detect the status of the equipment (like temperature, pressure, vibration, speed), and collect maintenance history. These data can be used to predict the failure or maintenance of the equipment giving the ability to act at the right time.
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Workers and equipment safety improvement: IoT can help in prediction of the failure of the underground mines roof or failure of any particular application which would result in saving the life of the workers inside mines. The early warning system would become more effective by leveraging the real-time data collected by the IoT nodes.
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Automation advances for maintenance and operations of machines: IoT data can be used to automate various tasks like driving, the autonomous movement of machines to improve the productivity and create a seamless experience.
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Energy and cost benefits: IoT provides the chance to optimize the processes and operations that would result in energy saving and cost reduction.
There are some significant challenges in implementing IoT in mining industries. The mining industry is attractive to cyber-attacks due to its substantial economic factors for a nation. Latest digital technology such as IoT increases the chance of having security loopholes in the IoT technologies that can be exploited by the malicious entities. Some of the crucial information related to mining operations may be exposed to the internet as a result of implementation of IoT causing the mine to become more vulnerable. Even the old attack vectors like Denial-of-Service (DoS) (refer Section 5.2) attack can disrupt the operations of mines including disrupting autonomous machine operations resulting in unsafe working area. Therefore, the paper has also provided an extensive review of the security requirements based on the proposed IoT system model for the underground mines. The key issues addressed in this paper are summarized as follows:
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Introducing automated self-advancing goaf edge support (SAGES) in the underground mines which is a new invention for increasing the productivity and safety of the workers. It protects from possible roof collapse during extraction of coal by providing support at the working place below ground (working front) [9]. SAGES is a classic example of application of automation and Information Technology in mines. Further attempts are being made to convert the SAGES to a smart-SAGES so that the entire operation and monitoring of SAGES may be made remotely by implementing IoT based communication channel.
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Proposing IoT System model for the underground mines and mapping it to the IoT building blocks.
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A detailed insight into the underground mines communication and role of IoT in implementing an efficient and seamless flow of crucial real-time information gathered through various types of sensors used in the underground mines. It enables an quick decision making process and keeping the workplace safe and productive.
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Providing detailed information about the IoT security challenges and how mining industry is vulnerable. IoT security requirements and threat, and risk analysis are discussed in details.
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Providing an insight into conceptual threat and risk analysis based on the compiled mines data and underground mines IoT model. The result of the analysis is concluded in the review paper.
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Providing an extensive study of open issues that need to be addressed during the designing and implementation of the proposed IoT system model.
The remainder of the paper is organized as follows. Inter-disciplinary background concepts are explained in Section 2. A brief concept of the rock mechanics has been presented as the same plays crucial role in design of a stable underground mines and deployment of support (SAGES) for keeping the work place safe. An overview of IoT with its building blocks and IoT protocols are presented in the section. Space mining is introduced as new mining horizon. The genesis of underground mines communication is explained in Section 3 that provides insights on the brief history of mines communication technologies followed up by current trends in Section 4. Section 5 outlines and includes detail information about the taxonomy of security challenges in the underground mines communication based on IoT. Taxonomy of new cryptographic technology ‘Blockchain’ is introduced and explained how it could fit into IoT security goals. Section 6 presents the result of conceptual risk analysis performed on the proposed underground mines IoT system model and assembled mines data. Section 7 discusses the open issues and challenges in adoption of IoT technologies in the underground mining, followed by the conclusion of the review paper in Section 8.
Section snippets
Background concept
Background concept and important information of various inter-disciplinary technologies is provided in this section. A brief overview of rock mechanics studies needed for stability analysis of underground mines including the design of excavation and support systems has been given in Section 2.1. Section 2.2 introduces current communication technologies in the mining industry. The detailed concept and underlying protocols for the Internet of Things are explained in Section 2.3.
Genesis of underground mines communication
Mining operations are intended to extract useful mineral from the earth crust. Such operations can destabilize the structure itself, if not executed in a planned manner. Reliable and effective communication is an essential mechanism for achieving safe and productive mining operation.
In the historical times, while the material extraction technology goes back many centuries, the mining communication systems stretch back only to the last century. The invention of the telephone precipitated the
Current trends: underground mines communication
It is important to get an insight of the current communication technologies and trends in underground mines communication. There are various communications systems like leaky feeder, node mesh, through-the-earth radio signals and other tracking systems that include radio frequency identification (RFID) and received signal strength identification (RSSI). These communication and tracking technologies and their applications for underground mines are explained in [14], [20], [46], [47], [48], [49].
Taxonomy of UMC IoT security challenges
This section addresses the problems associated with the lack of clear security taxonomy for UMC IoT by identifying different types of security-related goals, providing clear definitions, and further placing them within a risk rating methodology. Even though the popularity of IoT is increased, a number of security challenges have already been reported in these environments [57], [58], [59], [60]. Therefore, an introduction to CIA triad security goals has been explained in the Section 5.2. The
Threat and risk analysis of TRAGEN blocks
A conceptual threat and risk analysis is performed on the proposed system model on the TRAGEN IoT blocks as depicted in Fig. 7 that has been described in the Section 5.4. The purpose of this analysis is to demonstrate the usage of the concept explained in the previous sections. Also, to find the vulnerabilities in the TRAGEN block, which is the enabling block of IoT in the underground mines. Table 7 provides a compilation of assets and security objectives using the proposed underground mines
Open issues
This section presents several important issues that have not been thoroughly studied till now as research directions in the development and adoption of IoT technologies in the underground mining.
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Architectural: Lack of standardisation in IoT architecture is negatively affecting the growth of IoT and increasing the challenges in IoT security. Poorly designed and implemented IoT systems using heterogeneous devices and protocols bring more complexity [34], [35]. Lack of standards for audit and
Conclusions and future work
The mining industry has a significant responsibility towards the health, safety, legal and social requirements of the human resources and country’s economy. IoT technology can tremendously benefit mining industry as far as productivity and safety of workers is concerned, and that has been introduced with IoT building blocks in Section 2.3. The genesis of underground mines communication (refer Section 3) provided a good insight of the widely used communication technology and system. This
Acknowledgement
Very special gratitude goes out to Prof. G.S.P. Singh, Department of Mining Engineering, IIT (BHU), Varanasi, India and Prof. U. K. Singh, Department of Mining Engineering, IIT (ISM), Dhanbad, India for reviewing the paper and giving essential tips that improved the quality of the paper. A special mention to Bosch Thermotechnik GmbH for the support and co-operation.
Ankit Singh is currently working as a product manager of MindSphere Open IoT platform at Siemens AG, Germany. Previously, he worked as software engineer and project manager for IoT infrastructure development at Bosch Thermotechnik GmbH, Germany and was research assistant at secure mobile systems department at Fraunhofer Institute for Secure Information Technology, Germany. He is pursuing his part-time PhD at Department of Mining Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology (ISM), Dhanbad, India.
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Ankit Singh is currently working as a product manager of MindSphere Open IoT platform at Siemens AG, Germany. Previously, he worked as software engineer and project manager for IoT infrastructure development at Bosch Thermotechnik GmbH, Germany and was research assistant at secure mobile systems department at Fraunhofer Institute for Secure Information Technology, Germany. He is pursuing his part-time PhD at Department of Mining Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology (ISM), Dhanbad, India. He had obtained his masters in High Integrity Systems from Frankfurt University of Applied Sciences, Germany. His work focus on IT security, and privacy concerns in Internet of Things and Business Model Innovation.
Prof. Dr. Dheeraj Kumar is presently Professor and In-charge of Mine Surveying section at Department of Mining Engineering, IIT (ISM) Dhanbad. He has published more than 60 technical research papers. He has already completed more than 50 industrial consultancy projects and 5 research projects sponsored by various mining and allied industries. Prof. Kumar has trained more than 500 mining executives on various mining and allied disciplines for different organizations. Prof. Kumar is a recipient of State Bank of India (SBI) 2nd Best Researcher of IIT (ISM) for the years 2012-13, 2013-14 and 2014-15.
Dr. Jürgen Hötzel is director of the department “Engineering IoT Systems and Solutions” at Bosch Thermotechnik GmbH, Germany. Formerly, he lead teams to realize products in the area of Driver assistance systems based on environmental analysis for functions like parking, pre-crash or pedestrian protection. He graduated in Electronics with focus on computer engineering at the University of Darmstadt, Germany and received a PhD from the Technical University Berlin, Germany in the area of smart sensors. His current work includes IoT system architecture, machine learning for heating systems, Internet connectivity and smart applications like smartphone Apps and IoT backend applications.