The Norwegian long-term program for military use of autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) reached an important milestone in December 2001, when the concept of AUV based mine hunting and rapid environmental assessment (REA) was demonstrated from the Oksøy class mine hunting vessel KNM Karmøy. Within one day, the complete concept of AUV based mine hunting was demonstrated: The HUGIN AUV was progr...

The two primary measures of land mine detection performance are the probability of detection Pd and the probability of false alarm Pfa.These two measures are highly interdependent and must be evaluated together. The relationship between the two probabilities directly a ects the overall performance of the sensor in the eld. In this paper we introduce a novel false alarm non-parametric lter based...

The RFID-based positioning equipment, which is widely used in mine operation such as coal mine, has the advantages of low cost and maturity. It can locate human effectively so that it could improve the production safety situation and provide guarantee for disaster prevention and relief. However, the traditional RFID technology has the drawbacks of small monitoring range and no orientation which...

To investigate potential health risks associated with exposure to metals from an abandoned metal mine, the authors studied people living near an abandoned mine (n=102) and control groups (n=149). Levels of cadmium, copper, arsenic, lead, and zinc were measured in the air, soil, drinking water, and agricultural products. To assess individual exposure, biomarkers of each metal in blood and urine ...

NIOSH has developed an automated PC-based seismic event (induced earthquake) monitoring system for use in mine ground control studies. The distribution and coordination of data acquisition and processing functions across a local area network is a central feature of the system. Mine-wide installations utilize multiple, autonomous seismic networks located both underground and on the surface. Seis...

The socio-ecological impacts of large scale resource extraction are frequently underreported in underdeveloped regions. The open-pit Grasberg mine in Papua, Indonesia, is one of the world's largest copper and gold extraction operations. Grasberg mine tailings are discharged into the lowland Ajkwa River deposition area (ADA) leading to forest inundation and degradation of water bodies critical t...

Visual images of our own and others' body parts can be highly similar, but the types of information we wish to extract from them are highly distinct. From our own body we wish to combine visual information with, at least, somatosensory, proprioceptive and motor information in order to guide our interpretation of sensory events and our actions upon the world. For others' bodies we only have visu...

Federal regulations require that refuge alternatives (RAs) be located within 305 m (1,000 ft) of the working face and spaced at one-hour travel distances in the outby area in underground coal mines, in the event that miners cannot escape during a disaster. The Mine Safety and Health Administration mandates that RAs provide safe shelter and livable conditions for a minimum of 96 hours while main...

The problem of mined area reduction is addressed in this paper. Pieces of information collected using airborne multispectral scanners and airborne full polarimetric SAR, together with context information, all integrated in a geographical information system, are classified and combined in order to find indicators of mine presence and mine absence and provide image analysts with adequate tools to...