4 ms·

It seems to me this approach could also be used for other aspects of mining. For instance, in Australia where I live there are many old gold, opal and other mi

It seems to me this approach could also be used for other aspects of mining. For instance, in Australia where I live there are many old gold, opal and other mines that have long been forgotten but which remain dangerous. Most are unlikely to emit toxic or greenhouse gasses but they're nevertheless still dangerous because they're often very deep vertical shafts that a person could stumble across and fall in. These old mines were likely closed over when they were abandoned but often their closures/seals were made of wood that has probably rotted away over the past century or so. It stands to reason that AI would be just as effective in this situation.

mschuster91 2y ago
> Most are unlikely to emit toxic or greenhouse gasses but they're nevertheless still dangerous because they're often very deep vertical shafts that a person could stumble across and fall in. That's a problem in Germany as well [1] - particularly in NRW, where most of Germany's mining activity is concentrated for centuries. About two or three times a week an old shaft collapses somewhere in Germany, leading to sinkholes - there's tens of thousands old mine shafts in the country and information on a lot of the legal ones got lost in one of the two world wars, and on top of these come quite the lot of illegal operations. Usually the damage is in some remote area, some forest or whatnot, but in some rare cases, entire buildings vanish or have to be condemned. [1] https://www.stern.de/gesellschaft/bergbauschaeden--zehntausende-alte-stollen-sind-einsturzgefaehrdet-7937914.html https://www.stern.de/gesellschaft/bergbauschaeden--zehntause...
- creshal 2y ago
  And for a long time, it was legal to have fun constructs like "so the mine entrance goes horizontal for a bit until the main shaft starts right under the local orphanage", so sinkholes can be all sorts of fun.
  - HdS84 2y ago
    In Mendig (Eifel) there is an enormous mine for millstones which was in us for the whole middle age until the 19th century or so. Most people just dug down from their Celler and the whole city stands on enormous caverns.
    - saalweachter 2y ago
      As an American, I tend to think that D&D contrivances like "everyone's basement is connected to a massive labyrinth" are unrealistic, but ...
      - HdS84 2y ago
        Haha good catch. I actually did some dsa campaigns inspired by these caves. They are super still, cold and eerie. Most of the shafts are filled today but you can see how dangerous they where. Small steps, without any guardrails, often slippery because water leaks in die to cracks in the rock. Also, many caverns are big, because they excavated the stone but the access tunnels are super small and steep. Here are some pictures https://www.google.com/search?sca_esv=f23c15b34ae4d7a1&q=lavakeller+mendig&udm=2&fbs=AEQNm0A6bwEop21ehxKWq5cj-cHa02QUie7apaStVTrDAEoT1GiVzOBBcEbsoZQwi7osVtOt14TuvywiCQwEDdjn352nsZleooGBRFgsZ8q34fIGxmKtJTvLlldxHBaRp1FNswbP3Zte7XrAPAfxv4OvthrCfBKWuDPyCjrwgjWHKTMZka2i43dPKZnFu4kprjDIpHHTQEMO&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwikzafgtpKKAxWnVaQEHUIdAqEQtKgLegQIFRAB&biw=412&bih=699&dpr=2.63 https://www.google.com/search?sca_esv=f23c15b34ae4d7a1&q=lav...
westurner 2y ago
Is securing old mines a good job for (remotely-operated (humanoid)) robots? Old mines can host gravitational energy storage. From https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35778721 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35778721 : > FWIU we already have enough abandoned mines in the world to do all of our energy storage needs? "Gravity batteries: Abandoned mines could store enough energy to power ‘the entire earth’" (2023) https://www.euronews.com/green/2023/03/29/gravity-batteries-abandoned-mines-could-store-enough-energy-to-power-the-entire-earth https://www.euronews.com/green/2023/03/29/gravity-batteries-...
XorNot 2y ago
On the other hand, old gold mines tend to be the best place to find gold - the older the better since the technological capabilities for gold recovery today are much greater then those of the old miners (yet evidently they must've been finding something to think it worth to keep digging).
aaron695 2y ago
[flagged]
- zeofig 2y ago
  It's simple really. You use the power of imagination. In your mind, AI can do anything!
- nkrisc 2y ago
  And the other side of HN, where abandoned mineshafts are a societal good and bulldozing hazards that blight the landscape makes kids soft?
defrost 2y ago
It seems to be this approach (using AI to identify symbols on old maps) would be useless in finding old shafts in Australia as such things pepper the landscape in various regions (eg: the Kalgoorlie goldfields) but the majority were rarely marked on a map beyond the obvious lease records that exist that probably had shafts somewhere within the lease pegs. A better approach would be to tune an "AI" or rather an adaptive Kalman filter variation to highlight probable shafts from airborne EM and|or ground ERT surveys: * https://www.earthdoc.org/content/papers/10.3997/2214-4609.201902447 https://www.earthdoc.org/content/papers/10.3997/2214-4609.20... * https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0013795221004117 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S001379522... * https://nextinvestors.com/learn-to-invest/mining/electromagnetic-em-surveys-explained/ https://nextinvestors.com/learn-to-invest/mining/electromagn... * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrical_resistivity_tomography https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrical_resistivity_tomogra... * Variations on this type of thing: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0098300408000435?via%3Dihub https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00983...
- jvanderbot 2y ago
  A kalman filter does what, in this case? Pardon my ignorance, but I have only seen that used for estimating locations / parameters of some process or target, not for determining existence ("is N>0?") or amounts ("what is N?"). You could cobble together a quantity estimation doing some kind of batch data association with noisy "presence" measurements, but you're probably not much better off than k-means at that point and any KF-based measurement will basically just say "Yes N>=1" because the probability is nonzero.
  - defrost 2y ago
    There's much fun to be had with filters of varying kinds - in airborne mag KF filters can be used for removing heading induced signal - variations due to the plane travelling in specific headings wrt earth magnetic field. In a similar handwavy fashion, after picking instrument paramers and distances that might twitch on shaft responses, filters can be zeroed on regions with no shafts to see if an enhanced response can be amplified when processing the return over ground with a shaft to the surface. Other tells for lost 'hidden' shafts might include Lidar profiles of spoil heaps .. these are clear in some cases, eroded and softened in many others. A good many old shafts are visible from the air in any case; more so at some times of days than others - if the will is there to map them then a first pass combo of visual processing and lidar returns to map out open shafts is a good start.
mimentum 2y ago
There already exists, GeoResGLOBE. https://georesglobe.information.qld.gov.au/ https://georesglobe.information.qld.gov.au/ Go for your life ;)
lm28469 2y ago
The problem is that if oil/mining companies had to take care of old wells/mines they'd instantly go bankrupt. The only reason they make so much money is because they disregard externalities
- aziaziazi 2y ago
  You mean, like other companies with worldwide concurrence?
- gosub100 2y ago
  Take care of old mines from other companies?
- AndyMcConachie 2y ago
  They'd still make tons of money if they had to cleanup their spills and old mines. They're just greedy and want to make more.
  - lm28469 2y ago
    > They'd still make tons of money I don't think you understand the scale of the problem... Plugging leaking wells in the US alone is estimated to cost $280b, that's 10 years of net profit for Shell or ExxonMobil. Even taking the top 5 world oil companies _profit_ from 2022 (most profitable year so far) you're short $80b, for the US alone, and that's only onshore wells. > Researchers estimate that there are between 2-3 million abandoned oil and gas wells in the United States, and more than 117,000 of those, across 27 states, are “orphaned”—that is, uncapped, unproductive, and with no responsible party identified to manage leakage or pollution risks https://www.cnbc.com/2022/02/24/plugging-methane-leaking-oil-gas-wells-in-the-us-will-cost-billions.html https://www.cnbc.com/2022/02/24/plugging-methane-leaking-oil... https://www.sciline.org/environment-energy/abandoned-oil-gas-wells https://www.sciline.org/environment-energy/abandoned-oil-gas...
    - PittleyDunkin 2y ago
      If the companies can't responsibly operate as a for-profit entity, nationalization seems like a reasonable path forward.

mschuster91 2y ago

> Most are unlikely to emit toxic or greenhouse gasses but they're nevertheless still dangerous because they're often very deep vertical shafts that a person could stumble across and fall in. That's a problem in Germany as well [1] - particularly in NRW, where most of Germany's mining activity is concentrated for centuries. About two or three times a week an old shaft collapses somewhere in Germany, leading to sinkholes - there's tens of thousands old mine shafts in the country and information on a lot of the legal ones got lost in one of the two world wars, and on top of these come quite the lot of illegal operations. Usually the damage is in some remote area, some forest or whatnot, but in some rare cases, entire buildings vanish or have to be condemned. [1] https://www.stern.de/gesellschaft/bergbauschaeden--zehntausende-alte-stollen-sind-einsturzgefaehrdet-7937914.html https://www.stern.de/gesellschaft/bergbauschaeden--zehntause...

creshal 2y ago
And for a long time, it was legal to have fun constructs like "so the mine entrance goes horizontal for a bit until the main shaft starts right under the local orphanage", so sinkholes can be all sorts of fun.
- HdS84 2y ago
  In Mendig (Eifel) there is an enormous mine for millstones which was in us for the whole middle age until the 19th century or so. Most people just dug down from their Celler and the whole city stands on enormous caverns.
  - saalweachter 2y ago
    As an American, I tend to think that D&D contrivances like "everyone's basement is connected to a massive labyrinth" are unrealistic, but ...
    - HdS84 2y ago
      Haha good catch. I actually did some dsa campaigns inspired by these caves. They are super still, cold and eerie. Most of the shafts are filled today but you can see how dangerous they where. Small steps, without any guardrails, often slippery because water leaks in die to cracks in the rock. Also, many caverns are big, because they excavated the stone but the access tunnels are super small and steep. Here are some pictures https://www.google.com/search?sca_esv=f23c15b34ae4d7a1&q=lavakeller+mendig&udm=2&fbs=AEQNm0A6bwEop21ehxKWq5cj-cHa02QUie7apaStVTrDAEoT1GiVzOBBcEbsoZQwi7osVtOt14TuvywiCQwEDdjn352nsZleooGBRFgsZ8q34fIGxmKtJTvLlldxHBaRp1FNswbP3Zte7XrAPAfxv4OvthrCfBKWuDPyCjrwgjWHKTMZka2i43dPKZnFu4kprjDIpHHTQEMO&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwikzafgtpKKAxWnVaQEHUIdAqEQtKgLegQIFRAB&biw=412&bih=699&dpr=2.63 https://www.google.com/search?sca_esv=f23c15b34ae4d7a1&q=lav...

westurner 2y ago

Is securing old mines a good job for (remotely-operated (humanoid)) robots? Old mines can host gravitational energy storage. From https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35778721 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35778721 : > FWIU we already have enough abandoned mines in the world to do all of our energy storage needs? "Gravity batteries: Abandoned mines could store enough energy to power ‘the entire earth’" (2023) https://www.euronews.com/green/2023/03/29/gravity-batteries-abandoned-mines-could-store-enough-energy-to-power-the-entire-earth https://www.euronews.com/green/2023/03/29/gravity-batteries-...

XorNot 2y ago

On the other hand, old gold mines tend to be the best place to find gold - the older the better since the technological capabilities for gold recovery today are much greater then those of the old miners (yet evidently they must've been finding something to think it worth to keep digging).

aaron695 2y ago

[flagged]

zeofig 2y ago
It's simple really. You use the power of imagination. In your mind, AI can do anything!
nkrisc 2y ago
And the other side of HN, where abandoned mineshafts are a societal good and bulldozing hazards that blight the landscape makes kids soft?

defrost 2y ago

It seems to be this approach (using AI to identify symbols on old maps) would be useless in finding old shafts in Australia as such things pepper the landscape in various regions (eg: the Kalgoorlie goldfields) but the majority were rarely marked on a map beyond the obvious lease records that exist that probably had shafts somewhere within the lease pegs. A better approach would be to tune an "AI" or rather an adaptive Kalman filter variation to highlight probable shafts from airborne EM and|or ground ERT surveys: * https://www.earthdoc.org/content/papers/10.3997/2214-4609.201902447 https://www.earthdoc.org/content/papers/10.3997/2214-4609.20... * https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0013795221004117 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S001379522... * https://nextinvestors.com/learn-to-invest/mining/electromagnetic-em-surveys-explained/ https://nextinvestors.com/learn-to-invest/mining/electromagn... * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrical_resistivity_tomography https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrical_resistivity_tomogra... * Variations on this type of thing: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0098300408000435?via%3Dihub https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00983...

jvanderbot 2y ago
A kalman filter does what, in this case? Pardon my ignorance, but I have only seen that used for estimating locations / parameters of some process or target, not for determining existence ("is N>0?") or amounts ("what is N?"). You could cobble together a quantity estimation doing some kind of batch data association with noisy "presence" measurements, but you're probably not much better off than k-means at that point and any KF-based measurement will basically just say "Yes N>=1" because the probability is nonzero.
- defrost 2y ago
  There's much fun to be had with filters of varying kinds - in airborne mag KF filters can be used for removing heading induced signal - variations due to the plane travelling in specific headings wrt earth magnetic field. In a similar handwavy fashion, after picking instrument paramers and distances that might twitch on shaft responses, filters can be zeroed on regions with no shafts to see if an enhanced response can be amplified when processing the return over ground with a shaft to the surface. Other tells for lost 'hidden' shafts might include Lidar profiles of spoil heaps .. these are clear in some cases, eroded and softened in many others. A good many old shafts are visible from the air in any case; more so at some times of days than others - if the will is there to map them then a first pass combo of visual processing and lidar returns to map out open shafts is a good start.

mimentum 2y ago

There already exists, GeoResGLOBE. https://georesglobe.information.qld.gov.au/ https://georesglobe.information.qld.gov.au/ Go for your life ;)

lm28469 2y ago

The problem is that if oil/mining companies had to take care of old wells/mines they'd instantly go bankrupt. The only reason they make so much money is because they disregard externalities

aziaziazi 2y ago
You mean, like other companies with worldwide concurrence?
gosub100 2y ago
Take care of old mines from other companies?
AndyMcConachie 2y ago
They'd still make tons of money if they had to cleanup their spills and old mines. They're just greedy and want to make more.
- lm28469 2y ago
  > They'd still make tons of money I don't think you understand the scale of the problem... Plugging leaking wells in the US alone is estimated to cost $280b, that's 10 years of net profit for Shell or ExxonMobil. Even taking the top 5 world oil companies _profit_ from 2022 (most profitable year so far) you're short $80b, for the US alone, and that's only onshore wells. > Researchers estimate that there are between 2-3 million abandoned oil and gas wells in the United States, and more than 117,000 of those, across 27 states, are “orphaned”—that is, uncapped, unproductive, and with no responsible party identified to manage leakage or pollution risks https://www.cnbc.com/2022/02/24/plugging-methane-leaking-oil-gas-wells-in-the-us-will-cost-billions.html https://www.cnbc.com/2022/02/24/plugging-methane-leaking-oil... https://www.sciline.org/environment-energy/abandoned-oil-gas-wells https://www.sciline.org/environment-energy/abandoned-oil-gas...
  - PittleyDunkin 2y ago
    If the companies can't responsibly operate as a for-profit entity, nationalization seems like a reasonable path forward.