Development and Application of the Safe Performance Index as a Risk-based Methodology for Identifying Major Hazard-related Safety Issues in Underground Coal Mines
Open Access
- Author:
- Kinilakodi, Harisha
- Graduate Program:
- Energy and Mineral Engineering
- Degree:
- Doctor of Philosophy
- Document Type:
- Dissertation
- Date of Defense:
- September 19, 2012
- Committee Members:
- Dr R Larry Grayson, Dissertation Advisor/Co-Advisor
Dr R Larry Grayson, Committee Chair/Co-Chair
William Arthur Groves, Committee Member
Antonio Nieto, Committee Member
Dr Samuel A Oyewole, Committee Member
Andris Freivalds, Committee Member - Keywords:
- Mine Safety
Performance Index
Safety Violation
Safety-Related Risk
Risk Analysis
Risk Index - Abstract:
- The underground coal mining industry has been under constant watch due to the high risk involved in its activities, and scrutiny increased because of the disasters that occurred in 2006-07. In the aftermath of the incidents, the U.S. Congress passed the Mine Improvement and New Emergency Response Act of 2006 (MINER Act), which strengthened the existing regulations and mandated new laws to address the various issues related to a safe working environment in the mines. Risk analysis in any form should be done on a regular basis to tackle the possibility of unwanted major hazard-related events such as explosions, outbursts, airbursts, inundations, spontaneous combustion, and roof fall instabilities. One of the responses by the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) in 2007 involved a new pattern of violations (POV) process to target mines with a poor safety performance, specifically to improve their safety. However, the 2010 disaster (worst in 40 years) gave an impression that the collective effort of the industry, federal/state agencies, and researchers to achieve the goal of zero fatalities and serious injuries has gone awry. The Safe Performance Index (SPI) methodology developed in this research is a straight-forward, effective, transparent, and reproducible approach that can help in identifying and addressing some of the existing issues while targeting (poor safety performance) mines which need help. It combines three injury and three citation measures that are scaled to have an equal mean (5.0) in a balanced way with proportionate weighting factors (0.05, 0.15, 0.30) and overall normalizing factor (15) into a mine safety performance evaluation tool. It can be used to assess the relative safety-related risk of mines, including by mine-size category. Using 2008 and 2009 data, comparisons were made of SPI-associated, normalized safety performance measures across mine-size categories, with emphasis on small-mine safety performance as compared to large- and medium-sized mines. The accident rates (NDL IR, NFDL IR, SM/100) of very small and small mines in 2008 and 2009 were less than those of medium and large mines. The data indicates a heavy occurrence of very severe injuries in a number of very small and small mines. In another application which is a part of this research, the six normalized safety measures and the SPI are used to evaluate the risk that existed at mines in the two years preceding the occurrence of a fatality. This mine safety performance tracking method could have been helpful to the companies, state agency, or MSHA in recognizing and addressing emerging problems with actions that may have been able to prevent high-risk conditions, the fatality, and/or other serious injuries. The approach would have given scrutiny to the risk of mines that encompassed 74% of the fatalities during 2007-2010. In order to assess the SPI as a comparable risk measurement tool, a traditional risk approach is also developed using data embracing frequency and severity in the final equation to analyze the relative risk for all underground coal mines for the years 2007–2010. Then, the SPI is compared with this traditional risk analysis method to demonstrate that the results attained by either method provide the relative safety-related risk of underground coal mines regarding injuries and citations for violations of regulations. The comparison reveals that the SPI does emulate a traditional approach to risk analysis. A correlation coefficient of –0.89 or more was observed between the results of these two methodologies and either can be used to assist companies, the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA), or state agencies in target-ing mines with high risk for serious injuries and elevated citations for remediation of their injury and/or violation experience. The SPI, however, provides a more understandable approach for mine operators to apply using measures compatible with MSHA’s enforcement tools. These methodologies form an all-encompassing approach that can be used to assist companies, the MSHA, or state agencies in targeting mines with high risk for serious injuries and elevated citations. Once targeted as high risk, mines can then pursue appropriate intervention to remediate their violation and/or injury experience. This research may help in plugging the gap in the safety system and better pursue the goal of zero fatalities and serious injuries in the underground coal mines.