INDIRES

Duration of the project:
01.07.2017 - 30.06.2020

Contact person:

A funding application for the research project bearing the acronym INDIRES was submitted to the Research Fund for Coal and Steel (RFCS) programme in September 2016. The project was highly praised and earned the financial support of the European Commission – Grant Agreement No 748632.

The goal of the INDIRES project is the research of technology and technical equipment that will support the planning and carrying out of rescue operations, particularly through the collection and exchange of information. Its main focus is serious incidents in underground mines, which may endanger the health and safety of the mining personnel, as well as influence the future functioning of the mine. The following goals of the project may be described in detail:

• improving communication through the development of technologies for transmission “through the rock mass” and hybrid radio technologies,
• developing sensors resistant to extreme conditions,
• constructing unmanned vehicles characterised by their ability to move in difficult conditions (rock caving, fogging, etc.),
• providing adequate access to accident areas by developing a drill operating at a frequency close or equal to the natural frequencies of the mined rock, as well as support legs built from light and modern composite materials, which would secure the exposed roof from rock slides,
• numerical modelling encompassing two fundamental aspects: the evacuation process of the mining personnel, where it is most important to provide information regarding the most likely location of all missing miners, and the prediction of temperature changes and environmental variables, including the assessment of the danger to the mining personnel, the rescue personnel and the search vehicles,
• developing devices/tools/construction to support all the aforementioned goals.

The INDIRES project research will be conducted by an interdisciplinary consortium. This will ensure the necessary balance between the theoretical and practical aspects of the work, as well as between the research and the requirements set by the coal manufacturers and rescue teams. The consortium is composed of organisations from five EU member states and includes four research institutions (DMT from Germany and the following Polish institutes: EMAG, GIG and KOMAG), two coal manufacturers (Premogovnik Velenje from Slovenia and Polska Grupa Górnicza sp. z o.o.), an engineering company specialising in underground work (Geocontrol from Spain) and three universities (the University of Exeter in the United Kingdom, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid in Spain and the Silesian University of Technology).