Institute of Mining Safety
Mining as a high-risk occupation, There has been more than 11,000 miners died in South Africa over the past two decades. Although in recent years, with the improvement of national regulatory system and mining standards, the number of deaths has decreased year by year, mining accidents are still a disaster that cannot be ignored but can be prevented. In order to reduce the possibility of disasters, in addition to improving the quality of mining, it is also very important to train miners' safety awareness and escape skills, rescue workers' rescue techniques, and the public's awareness of mining hazards. Therefore, this training center includes training on various types of mining disasters, such as dust explosions, collapsing of mine stopes, flooding, etc. At the same time, the training center utilizes 4 abandoned South African tailings: gold, coal, diamond, and platinum mines, distributed on the outskirts of Johannesburg as locations for exposing the public to mining hazards and training miners.
Center & Satellites
Gauteng
According to annual reports of South Africa Mining, the number of fatalities has decreased in recent 10 years but is still much higher than in other countries, such as Canada and the US. The illegal mining activities, the ignorance of mining safety, and lack of pre-mining training are possible reasons. By attracting the attention of miners to mining safety and training rescuers before accidents, the high fatality rates can be decreased. Therefore, a new mining academic system in Johannesburg, including a mining safety campus in the center of Johannesburg and nine practice sites distributed as satellites on the outskirts by using abandoned tailings. In addition, according to the mining fatalities in annual reports in recent years, the columns show the percentage of each type of fatality with the related training topic on each site. Such as by using an abandoned underground gold mine as the site for underground rescue simulation training.
Institute of Mining Safety
Johannesburg
The Institute of Mining Safety Campus is located in Johannesburg city center, adjacent to the main highway Francois Oberholzer-Fwy. The campus aims to create an environment to impart knowledge to miners and conduct small-scale rescue training for mine rescuers and labs for research, which includes a classroom building, laboratories, different types of rescue simulation practice sites (Rope rescue simulation, fire rescue simulation, flood rescue simulation, etc), student housing, gymnasium, and management building. The architectural form is a hint, inspired by architectural precedent UNISA ( University of South Africa) campus.
Tutors
Sanne van den Breemer
Filip Geerts
Ilmar Hurkxkens