An injury prevention research program supported by funding from the U.S. Bureau of Mines (USBM) and the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) resulted in the development, evaluation, and dissemination of approximately 70 narrative-based simulation exercises for mining industry workers in the United States (Catalog of training products, 1993). More than 400,000 copies of the mining exercises have been used in the United States, and additional copies are used in four other countries (Cole, 1993; Cole et al., 1993). Additional funding from the National Institute for Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS), the Office of Surface Mining, the Agency for Toxic Substances Disease Registry, and NIOSH produced interactive-narrative exercises for firefighters, mine reclamation inspectors, hazardous-waste workers, health care providers, and farm family adult and youth workers.

Stories to Live By

Forty-eight workers who had escaped large underground coal-mine fires were interviewed using an open-ended protocol. This information, and the actual experiences of one eight-person mine-section crew who escaped from a fire, were used to construct an 18-frame (page) table-top simulation exercise, which was then field tested with 134 miners. The exercise is a research tool that measures miners' proficiency in the information-gathering and decision-making skills related to escaping from a mine fire. It also helps miners to learn and practice these cognitive skills. The exercise was found to be valid and reliable. All miners reported that the exercise was authentic and would help them to remember important information. The exercise total score, and all but two item scores, significantly discriminated among miners with different levels of training. The two items that did not discriminate dealt with whether or not to abandon a helpless fellow miner. When the exercise total score data were pooled, only 13.6% of the miners achieved a desirable score of 90% mastery or greater. The simulation is important because it teaches and assesses critical judgment and decision-making skills that are rarely addressed in miner training.

Decision making during a simulated mine fire escape

Analysis of connecting a forcing fan to a multiple fan ventilation network of a real-life mine

Three mine explosions which occurred in the 1980s (1983--McClure No. 1 Mine, Virginia; 1984--Greenwich Collieries No. 1 Mine, Pennsylvania; and 1989--Pyro No. 9 Slope Williams Station Mine, Kentucky) cost twenty lives. The authors, by investigating these three cases, found a common ventilation problem. This problem was the misunderstanding of the diagonal connections in the mine ventilation system (MVS). Based on the findings from these investigations, the authors explain the importance of diagonal connections in a MVS and discuss other factors that affected safety.

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Three Underground Coal Mine Explosions — Twenty Miners Killed — One Reason

Disclaimer: Mention of any company or product does not constitute endorsement by NIOSH. ABSTRACT This study reports the results of a survey of organizations that used problem-solving simulation exercises to support mine health and safety training. The exercises are designed to teach judgment and decision-making skills within two broad domains: (1) how miners respond to mine emergencies (e.g., first aid, self-rescue, and escape) and (2) how miners integrate safety concepts within the context and performance of routine production work. The simulation exercises were distributed by the Mine Safety and Health Administration's National Mine Health and Safety Academy near Beckley, WV. The present study focused on those organizations that ordered the exercises from the Academy over a 2-year period (1995-96). Researchers assessed how the materials were used and trainer perceptions of the impact of these materials on annual mine health and safety training. A total of 147 organizations ordered the exercises over the 2-year period. Survey responses were obtained from 52 of these organizations. Sixty percent of the respondents rated the exercises as more useful than traditional instructional materials, 40% as equally useful, and 0% as less useful. Most trainers (79%) felt that the exercises help them to make better use of workers' knowledge and experience during training. Many (71%) also reported that the simulations helped to improve the effectiveness of their instruction and promoted a problem-solving approach to their training. Fifty of the fifty-two respondents reported that they would like to have new simulations developed. A large majority showed a proactive interest in helping to develop and field test new exercises. Ninety-four percent of the trainers judged the exercises as a good value; 92% planned to order more simulations in the future. Based on this study, recommendations are offered for the continuation and expansion of simulation exercises as one method for occupational health and safety training. Figure 1.—Network of organizations involved in the development and dissemination of the simulation exercises for the mining industry.

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Use of simulation exercises for safety training in the U.S. mining industry

On at least two separate occasions, methane gas explosions occurred in underground mines when separate ventilation systems were connected. A review of these disasters indicated that conceptual errors made by the miners may have contributed to these fatal mistakes. The conceptual errors thought to be at fault concerned inadequate mental models of flow distribution changes within the mine ventilation circuit. Research conducted in this study indicates that connecting previously unconnected and unobstructed parallel circuits or adding one or more resistors results in inadequate mental models of flow distribution changes in over 70% of the 136 mine workers sampled.

http://hfs.sagepub.com/content/36/4/745.full.pdf

Flow Distribution Changes in Complex Circuits: Implications for Mine Explosions

A growing trend in the area of artificial intelligence is the development of software that simulates the decision-making process of human experts. The purpose of this paper is to advance the use of available tools from the area of artificial intelligence, and in particular expert systems, into the field of mine ventilation management. The authors have developed an expert system (i.e., a smart manager) that controls the operation of a mine ventilation network. The expert system is rule based and hence can be (independently) enhanced in an incremental fashion. It serves as a smart interface between the monitoring and control components of a mine ventilation system.

Mine ventilation expert system

Using theory of network planning together with graph theory, an algorithm is presented that creates canonical diagrams for mine ventilation networks (MVN). The data generated by the algorithm is used in the construction and plotting phases of a program that automatically plots the canonical diagrams, which can then be used for further studies of a given MVN.

Canonical diagram as a graph representation of a mine ventilation network

A ventilation system for an underground mine includes a blowing curtain, a passive regulator in a shape of an airfoil and an airflow ventilation source. The passive regulator is positioned in the air path adjacent a discharge end of the blowing curtain.

Improvement of the blowing curtain face ventilation system for extended cut mining using passive regulator

/pdf/blowing-curtain-face-ventilation-system-for-extended-cut-4e7lgvclqh.pdf

Andrzej M. Wala

Papers

Flow Distribution Changes in Complex Circuits: Implications for Mine Explosions

Mine ventilation expert system

Canonical diagram as a graph representation of a mine ventilation network

Improvement of the blowing curtain face ventilation system for extended cut mining using passive regulator

Blowing curtain face ventilation system for extended cut mining using passive regulator