Abstract:
The mining industry in South Africa faces real challenges with regard
to the reduction of safety-related incidents. The purpose of this paper
is to highlight the need for alternative interventions in addition to
other safety improvement strategies already employed on mines. It
furthermore supports an existing paradigm: incident investigations.
An investigation into fatalities in the South African mining industry
shows that although great progress has been achieved through the
reduction in fatalities in all sectors of the industry over the last few
years, more can and should be done to achieve status of ‘zero harm’.
Fatalities and lost time injuries on mines result not only in large
financial losses, but also in disruptions of mining operations in
general through Section 54 stoppages to resolve the situation. The
approach of the paper is therefore not to try and prove whether there
is high fatality rate and/or lost time injuries, but in what way incident
reconstruction simulations (IRS) can have an impact in the future
prevention of such incidents. The challenge therefore lies in the
utilization of pro-active systems that would show employees the
possible outcomes of being exposed to certain hazards. In real life,
these incidents cannot be re-enacted and in most cases we can only
learn through the previous mistakes of others. A virtual reality (VR)
education and training system will enable employees to be ‘exposed’
to different hazards in a safe environment, and simulation, in a
‘forgiving’ environment, of the possible consequences of unsafe acts.
According to the Occupational Safety and Health Act (OSHA), unsafe
acts and unsafe conditions are indirect causes of safety-related
incidents, but there are also direct causes; for example, unplanned
release of energy and/or hazardous material, and basic causes, for
example, management safety policies, personal factors, and environmental
factors. The administrative workload associated with any
incident investigation places a large burden on the investigation
team, and in most cases other employees are informed through vague
administrative processes what the ’real cause’ for the
incident/accident was. New preventative strategies are often put in
place without showing the employees what the real causes of the
incident/accident was. This can be mitigated through the use of
interactive VR simulations/animations of the hazards that they are
exposed to and how to deal with them. If VR interventions are not
used as proposed by this paper, the real causes and consequences of
almost all fatalities and lost time injuries may never be fully
understood. This paper also emphasizes what potential impact IRS
could have on the prevention of future mine incidents as part and
parcel of a pro-active risk prevention strategy. The intention is
therefore not to replace any other risk prevention strategies, but to
visually enhance the reality of the incident.
