Professional Development Course on

Sudbury, Ontario, September 4 - 6, 2002

Sponsored by MIRARCO - Mining Innovation and Laurentian University

Instructors:
Dr. Erik Eberhardt, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, ETH Zurich
Dr. John Krahn, GEO-SLOPE International Ltd.

As economic pressures push for deeper, steeper open pit mines, open pit stability assessment becomes more important to the mining industry. As a result of this the tools used to detect rock and soil instability in open pit mines are of more importance now then ever before. This course will review the processes and mechanisms responsible for landslides in rock and soil, the procedures available for investigating them, and the means to analyze and mitigate such phenomenon. Emphasis will be placed on case studies and practical tutorials involving the use of conventional and numerical stability analysis techniques.

As the scale of tailings disposal reservoirs and tailings dams increase, advanced design methods require proper site characterization and slope analysis. A greater understanding of the pressures that cause these dams to fail is required to avoid the environmental damage exacted by tailings dam failures.