Work Safety and Environmental Protection in Mining

Bezpieczeństwo Pracy i Ochrona Środowiska w Górnictwie

Nr 1(365)/2025

Piotr KUJAWSKI, Jerzy PICUR
Qualifications of a mining surveyor and mining geologist in the current state of law

Surveying and geological documentation is the basic source of information on mining activities. The obligation to have, update and supplement it during the progress of works rests with the entrepreneur. The persons authorised to prepare it (apart from the exception concerning opencast mining plants) are a mining surveyor and a mining geologist, whose qualifications are confirmed by the president of the State Mining Authority. During the period of operation of the three mining laws, changes related to the certification of qualifications (authorisations) of a mining surveyor and a mining geologist mainly concerned the definition of the types of mining plants in which these activities could be performed. The Act of June 9, 2011 - Geological and Mining Law, in force since January 1, 2012, has introduced significant changes over a period of 12 years, both in terms of qualifications and the procedure. Subsequent modifications to the Act in 2015 and 2023 in the area of determining qualifications require clarification of the current legal status. It will be useful both for candidates seeking to have their qualifications verified and for those who already possess such qualifications.

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Joanna CUDERA, Mateusz CZARNOMSKI, Marta SUKIENNIK
The use of mine water from the drainage of the "Kujawy" coal mine for the irrigation of small retention facilities in the forests of the Gołąbki Forest District as an example of the renaturalisation of natural habitats

Sustainability in these days are becoming an inseparable part of mining activities. Mining companies constantly seek for ways to improve their image in the eyes of stakeholders, local community included. The cooperation of Holcim Polska S.A. and National Forests resulted in a project which can be a great example of sustainability in mining. The project was driven by a need to revive the natural water habitats back to forest areas, using the water that is coming from the dewatering of pits. Unrelenting climate change as a main reason of lowering the groundwater level, caused the devastation of local ecosystem. The limestone and marl deposit which is the object of extraction with its favourable hydrogeological conditions enable Holcim company to deliver sufficient part of pumped water in order to restore the retention base in forest areas. The article describes each step of project execution from the very beginning in 2017 to the final closure in October 2023, including formal and legal as well as technical aspects of implementation.

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Agnieszka MACHNICKA-KOTNIEWICZ, Wiesław JAKUBIAK
Hazards and accidents in Polish opencast mining in 2017-2023

The publication is an analysis of the safety status based on the statistical data of SMA [5] regarding accidents in Polish opencast mining in the years 2017-2023. The article presents methods of mining using the opencast method. Natural hazards related to opencast mining, water and landslide hazards were discussed. Technical hazards were characterised, including hazards related to rockfalls, the use of blasting agents and fires. The analysis of the number of dangerous incidents, the causes and circumstances of accidents recorded in Polish opencast mining in 2017-2023 showed that the main factor increasing the risk of an accident is the human, his actions and the way work is organised. The causes of incidents resulting in accidents were indicated. During the period under review, a total of 348 accidents occurred, including 23 fatal accidents and 9 serious accidents. The most common causes were considered to be improper work organisation (78%) and the improper use of machines and technical devices (18). In order to prevent such events in the future, the need to monitor and improve activities in the area of improving the awareness of mining crews, the need to eliminate risky behavior of employees, the proper organisation of work and the enforcement of the provisions of technical designs and work technology were indicated. In order to reduce the number of accidents caused by the so-called human factor, it was considered necessary to conduct further training of employees, and the tasks of the mining supervision authority included conducting inspections of the conditions and organisation of work in mining plants.

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Dariusz JUSZYŃSKI
Issues of analysing convergence measurements using machine learning techniques and recurrent neural networks

The article contains the author's experience with four recurrent neural network models made in the Tensorflow environment, designed to predict the convergence values of mine workings. It was shown that convergence measurements are sequential data and simple processing operations were performed on them. After formulating the criterion of convergence of learning curves, as a measure of correct training of the network, the construction of models was started. The models were made in four forecast variants, modelling both single and multiple outputs. Based on the learning curves, the fulfilment of the criterion was demonstrated and the possibility of using recurrent networks in modelling simple convergence courses was proven.