Ventilation management system for underground environments

The management of the ventilation system is crucial to deal with efficiency, health and safety issues in an underground environment. This paper presents the design of a geographic information system - also known as GIS - capable to store, manipulate and extract results from the data collected regarding the ventilation features of an underground mine. The GIS can also be adapted to other types of underground infrastructures or include any additional parameter required. A database of these parameters, in a case study, has been created taking into account two conditions: The changeable layout of the ventilation system during the evolution of the mine and the location of the control points, so the information can be analysed with the GIS in many different ways and purposes. Therefore, the system can control the underground conditions in the long term and evaluate any change applied to the ventilation circuit. The study has given insight of the most sensitive parts of a mine in terms of gases, temperature, air velocity and airflow - either from the principal or auxiliary ventilation circuit - finding a relationship among the airflow quantity, gases concentration and effective temperature. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.