ABSTRACT
Open pit mines in Australia are usually designed with steep slope walls to reduce the volume of waste material to be mined. With potentially severe consequences of wall failure, deformation monitoring has become an integral part of Australian open pit mining operations. The majority of monitoring surveys employ conventional terrestrial techniques. On the other hand, the advent of the Global Position System (GPS) has revolutionised many aspects of surveying methodology and can offer several potential benefits over conventional surveying methods. This paper discusses the application of GPS to mine wall deformation monitoring and describes a dedicated GPS monitoring system designed at Curtin University specifically to overcome the problems imposed by the open pit environment. The system represents an economical and precise technique for monitoring both slow permanent and intense short-term movements. Issues regarding hardware configuration and real-time data collection are discussed in addition to data processing strategies.
