Risk assessment of mining impacts on environment and water resources

The mining industry counts for one of the major causes of water pollution and ecological damages due to hazardous scenarios at different mine sine all over the world. The impacts on environment and people are devastating and not easy to estimate or measure. Ravages, a high amount of injured or dead people as well as contaminating effects on the surrounding due to accidental or continuous releases of toxic substances are not uncommon. As the contamination of water resources is one of the major threats of the 21st century and the mining industry accounts for a high percentage of water pollution sources, the roots have to be assessed in terms of potential in reducing or mitigating risks within the mining industry. Although often neglected, water resources are scarce and have to be protected to guarantee the supply of freshwater for the next generations. With different tools in risk management, different causes can be revealed and investigated to trace back the failure path and digging up the major causes of accidental scenarios. Perusing the events in an industrial environment, it can be seen that humans have a significant impact within the failure mode due to the fact that errors are an inherent part of human beings. Applying appropriate tools, it can be estimated to which extent human behavior impacts on hazardous situations in the mining industry which lead tremendous environmental damages and contamination of water resources. In this research work three tools will be applied for the risk assessment. By using Reason´s model, VMEA and @Risk, occurrences in mine sites will be investigated and analyzed to reveal root causes and to show future potential for reducing or mitigating mining accidents. The results of this project from applying Reason’s Model show the most important factors in this case is human error that is caused by some different reasons like lack of knowledge and information which are caused by some factors such as inadequate training and skills.

کلیدواژه ها:

risk assessment ، water crisis ، mining activities ، human factors ، safety culture ، Reason Model ، VMEA ، @Risk