Strategy towards accurate location of seismic events sources in mining environments: Effect of voids and backfill

Seismic events may occur naturally or unnaturally as a result of human activity. The focus of this research is on seismicity caused by human activities in underground mines. Despite significant technological advances in the mining industry, the phenomenon of rockburst and its mitigation measures are still controversial technique. Predicting the time of occurrence of rockbursts remains a challenge. At best we can estimate the potential location of seismic events from numerical modelling. Seismic monitoring systems play a major role in the mitigation of rockbursts by identifying their potential source locations. The accuracy of seismic event source locations depends on the reliability of the velocity model. Because the mining environment is constantly changing, a constant input velocity may result in spurious seismic event locations. In this paper physical laboratory models mimicking the continuously changing mining environment are used to investigate the impact of the changing mining environment on seismic wave velocity to provide means for predicting the seismic wave velocity in real-time to improve the accuracy of seismic source locations.