A new intelligent underground personnel tracking solution has been developed to enable mines to locate missing workers faster. Integrated with cap lamps and two-way communications, the system provides real-time location verification and assists in improving emergency response times and supports compliance with evolving mine safety requirements.

Proximity detection specialist Booyco Electronics electronic engineer Vashalen Naidoo says the company’s missing person locator (MPL) was developed to overcome critical limitations in traditional emergency response procedures.

“In the critical hour after an underground incident, such as a rockfall or fire, traditional manual roll-call systems can be too slow and are prone to human error,” Naidoo explains. “If communication infrastructure has been damaged, rescue teams are often left without accurate information about where personnel were last located.”

He notes that conventional tracking methods provide only limited location information and are dependent on infrastructure, whereas the new MPL uses a compact radio frequency transceiver integrated directly into each miner’s cap lamp.

Fixed communication anchors installed throughout the underground workings continuously receive signals from the cap lamp devices, creating an accurate record of each miner’s location while enabling two-way communication between underground personnel and the surface control room through the mine’s communication infrastructure.

“The tags continuously broadcast location data through the underground network to provide an accurate log of every miner’s last known position,” Naidoo says. “Importantly, messages can be transmitted back to the miner’s cap lamp, allowing the miner to acknowledge the alert.”

Booyco Electronics CEO Anton Lourens notes that the importance of this capability has been reinforced by amendments to Chapter 16 of South Africa’s Mine Health and Safety Act (MHSA), which require underground mines to implement systems capable of locating missing workers.

“The new requirement of the MHSA deals specifically with locating missing people in operations,” Lourens says. “Our MPL solution can either operate alongside an existing proximity detection system or function as a standalone system to meet that legal requirement.”

The MPL can also be used to deliver operational value during routine mining activities, such as blasting cycles, when every worker must be accounted for before blasting can commence. While lamp room checks remain standard practice, Naidoo says the MPL provides an additional level of verification.

The system has been designed for flexible deployment across a range of underground mining environments and can be integrated with existing mine communication infrastructure, or be installed with its own dedicated communications system.

“We see personnel tracking evolving from isolated, passive location systems towards a fully unified, predictive safety ecosystem,” says Lourens. “By combining personnel location, machine telemetry and behavioural information with data analytics, mines will increasingly be able to identify risks hopefully before incidents occur. This could then evaluate worker wellbeing in real time and guide personnel along the safest evacuation routes during emergencies.”