Cave mining owes its increasing popularity to its low operating cost and high productivity. However, the whole mine infrastructure must be designed and constructed before production begins. Consequently, all the design parameters are locked-in at a very early stage, long before the extraction of the cave column is initiated. As such, cave mining is a very inflexible mining method. The consequences associated with poor design are extreme, as opportunities for recovering once production starts is almost nil. As there could be no good design without high quality and sufficient quantity of data, the pathway from data to design in cave mining is paramount.

Mining methods, other than caving, have an opportunity to continuously gather data and adjust their mine design. In caving, the gathering, interpretation of data and design work must be condensed and completed within a few years, with hardly any opportunities to modify and improve the design during mining.

This emphasises the criticality of efficient and accurate data collection, with the data being fed into design techniques, on a critical path, within a very tight timeframe during scoping and feasibility studies.

This workshop will explore what are the best practices in cave mining data collection, management and interpretation, and the key design techniques currently in use at different stages of caving projects. There will be an emphasis on the timeline from data to design, and the advantages and limitations of different approaches.