Development of GPS and GIS-Based Monitoring System for the Quality of Excavated Coal

Because of the advancement of geospatial technologies such as GIS and GPS integration, many mining companies have started to use the technology for mine planning, analysis and management. In this context, this study focuses on red-time monitoring of the excavated coal quality using GIS and GPS integration. For this purpose, firstly, digital maps and tabular quality data were created by analysing the drill holes data, and then they were combined under the GIS environment by writing a MapBasic computer application using Visual Basic. The application consists of three sections. A GPS section that awaits the coordinate information that will be received over the GPS and that makes coordinate transformations; a map analysis section that functions in order to view digital maps and track shovel or trucks on the screen and the point-block-quality query section allows flexible data extraction, based on the structured query. Finally, by mounting a GPS receiver on the bucket wheel excavators in exemplary opencast coal mining, the monitoring of the excavation point over the digital maps were enabled, and the monitoring of the stock accounts as a database for the quality data such as the amount, LCV, MC%, and AC%, simultaneously with the coal production were provided