MINESIM '96

Nat. Tech. Univ.
Athens, GR

FIRST INTERNATIONAL SYMPOSIUM ON MINE SIMULATION VIA THE INTERNET

The First Inter. Symposium on Mine Simulation via the Internet was held from 3 Dec., 1996 until 13 Dec. This symposium was run using a WEB page set up and maintained at the National Technical University of Athens, Greece (NTUA). The symposium was co-hosted by the Dept. of Metallurgy and Mining of the Univ. of Idaho (UI) and the Dept. of Mining and Metallurgy of the NTUA.

General Format

The symposium was a "virtual symposium" in the truest sense of the meaning. It had all the elements of a regular symposium, with industrial sponsors, professional society sponsors, welcoming addresses by Prof. Robert Bartlett, the Dean of the College of Mines at UI and Prof. Kostas Panagopoulos, the Head of the Dept. of Mining & Metallurgy at NTUA. There was a non-compulsory registration form but no registration fees. Once the registration form was filled out, there was a message on the screen to "print this out". After clicking on the "print" icon, a name badge was printed out for each registrant, which was nearly identical to a regular registration badge. At the Univ. of Idaho, many of the Mining Engr. students (and even some of the faculty!) made the name badges solid and wore them to their classes.

There were links to the Athens weather WEB page for participants to learn what the weather was in Athens, with 10 minute updates. There was even a 'spouses' " tour of the Acropolis of Athens and Mount Athos. Other links were to the home pages of both universities

The Symposium is supported by an International Organizing Committee which currently includes:

Registration

During the two week period of the "official symposium", there were 450 formal Registrants but the WEB page had 2165 "hits". Since there was not a compulsory registration, it was not possible to determine exactly how many different people actually viewed the page. Also, it was realized that some of the people who were viewing the page might have thought that there was a registration fee and so were reluctant to sign in. There was, of course, not fee and perhaps this should have been stressed. It would seem to be reasonable to estimate that around 1,500 people did view it. The registrants were from 35 countries, with the majority from the U. S. A., Australia, Greece and Canada. However, countries such as Albania, Switzerland, New Zealand, Ireland, Belgium and Cyprus were also represented. When one considers that APCOM 26 at Penn State Univ. in Sept. of 1996 had only around 100 registrants, the Geostats conference in Wollongong, Australia, also in Sept., had 220 registrants and the 5th Inter. Symp. on Mine Planing and Equipment Selection in Nov. at Sao paulo, Brazil had around 120 registrants, the number of people who took part in MINESIM '96 is remarkable indeed. The theme of the symposium, namely, Mine Simulation, is not yet as recognized as, say, Rock Mechanics or Mine Ventilation. Thus, there may have been people who did not take part in the symposium because they though that the papers would all be devoted to this one topic.

The Team

The symposium was arranged by Dr. George N. Panagiotou (NTUA) and Dr. John R. Sturgul (UI). A call for papers went out to numerous professional journals and by email to the various mining WEB sites and bulletin boards. An International Organizing Committee was formed consisting of 31 individuals. These individuals were encouraged to publicize the symposium and solicit papers. The major professional societies were also encouraged to list the symposium under "Upcoming Events" or with such similar notices. The actual WEB page was done at the NTUA with a team of 4 people. Considering that the main WEB page for the Summer Olympics done by the television network NBC consisted of 75 (!) full time people, this was a most remarkable feat to have the WEB page up and running so well in the limited time available.

Papers

As with any symposium, the papers are the thing. There were 10 separate technical sessions. They were (with the numbers in parenthesis the number of papers): Simulation- Open Pit Mining Operations (7); Simulation - Underground Mining Operations (6); Simulation - General Topics (9); Virtual Reality (4); Expert Systems - Genetic Algorithms (9); Neural Networks )4); Mine Safety - Training (3); Modeling, Planning and Production Scheduling (24); Rock Mechanics (7); and Mine Equipment (8). Participants could read the comments on the papers. The fact that some sessions had many papers and others few points out another advantage of this form of symposium. In a traditional symposium, the editors need to balance the sessions due to time constraints and so ofter need to reject some otherwise acceptable papers. Here, all the papers that passed the reviews could be accepted and placed in the appropriate sessions.
One of the reasons for having this symposium was to enable people from countries where travel to international symposia is not convenient. Thus, it was gratifying to receive papers from authors form several of the Newly Independent States of the Former Soviet Union. Unfortunately, the Internet is not yet universal so there were people in some countries who wanted to take part but could not. For example, there were no registrants from Africa other than those from South Africa even though there was interest in the symposium by individuals from these countries. Email was received from countries such as Romania where the internet is not yet fully installed and so people in these countries who wanted to take part could not yet do so.

Another reason for the symposium was to expose the mining community to current research in new areas. Papers on topics of interest to the mining community such as POSES++, Virtual Reality, Artificial Intelligence, Neural Networks, Pareto Optimization, etc. were encouraged. Many mining engineers may not be aware of the current work using this software or in these fields.

Overall Response

To say that the overall response was gratifying would be an understatement. Although there was no direct template for participants to send in their comments, there was an email set up were comments could be sent. Many people chose to send their remarks directly to one or both to the principals involved. A sampling of these follow: "I would never have been able to attend if I had to do so in flesh. Congratulations!" "I have been showing the symposium to my students and letting them go on some of the tours. Everything is working very well." "This is an historical moment." "...the way of the future." "It is really amazing." "Good idea and use of the internet." "I believe this is a milestone in modern approach to mining techno-symposium." "I LIKE what I see, it's a first,...BOOKMARKED 6 - 8 PAPERS FOR FURTHER STUDY." "..even if you have not paid much attention to simulation before this, you will find a wide variety of papers, including graphics...". "The conference ehas been of great interest for all the instructors in my university." "Congratulations are in order...for organizing this innovative and successful symposium!." And, finally, from a participant from Canada: "Hip, hip, hooray for what you have done. I have difficult to find words of appreciation for your work.."

Proceedings

The Proceedings are going to be available for Balkemp (Rotterdam, Holland) in both hard back and CD-ROM (with the book). This will be published in late April or early May of 1997.

INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZING COMMITTEE

Co-Chairmen:Dr. John R. Sturgul, University of Idaho, USA sturgul@uidaho.eduDr. George N. Panagiotou, National Technical University of Athens, Greece panagiotou@metal.ntua.gr

Members:
Dr. Paul Appiah
Coal Corp of New Zealand, Hamilton, New Zealand
Paul.Appiah@Rotowaro.CoalCorp.CoalCorp.synet.net.nz
Dr. Ernest Baafi
Univ. of Wollongong, Australia
Ernest_Baafi@uow.edu.au
Prof. Lev Bakhvalov
Moscow State Mining Univ., Russia
msmu@msmu.smu.msk.ru
Dr. Arun Basu
WA School of Mines, Kalgoorlie, WA, Australia
rbasuj@cc.curtin.edu.au
Dr. Zhu Deren
Central Coal Mining Research Institute, Beijing, P. R. of China
cpliao@sun.ihep.ac.cn
Dr. Dave W. Ellis
D. W. Ellis and Associates, ltd., Canada
ellis@freenet.edmonton.ab.ca
Prof. Fenando Fujimura
Univ. of Sao Paulo, Brazil
ffujimur@cat.cce.usp.br
Dr. Seitgali Galiev
Mining Intitute, Alma-aty, Kazakhstan
do@igd.alma-ata.su
Prof. Monika Hardygora
Instytut Gornictwa, Wroclaw, Poland
hardygora@pwr.wroc.pl
Dr. Steven Henley
Snowden Associates Europe, England
steve@rci.co.uk
Dr. Uday Kumar
Lulea Univ. of Tech., Lulea, Sweden
uday.kumar@anl.luth.se
Prof-Dr.Peter Lorenz
Otto-von-Guericke Tech. Univ., Magdeburg, Germany
PELO@tumif.cs.Uni-Magdeburg.DE
Prof. V. Maglaris
National Technical University of Athens, Greece
maglaris@ntua.gr
Dr. John Meech
Univ. of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada
jam@mining.ubc.ca
Maria de los Angels Morelli
Univ. of Buenos Aires, Buenos Aires, Argentina
morellit@mara.fi.uba.ar
Dr. Jan Mutmansky
Penn State Univ., University Park, USA
mutmansk@ems.psu.edu
Dr. Jacek Paraszcak
Laval Univ., Quebec, Canada
jacek.paraszczak@gmn.ulaval.ca
Prof. A. Gunhan Pasamehmetoglu
Middle East Univ., Ankara, Turkey
gunhan@rorqual.cc.metu.edu.tr
Prof. Vladimir Petros
Univ. of Mining and Met., Ostrava, Czech Republic
Vladimir.Petros@vsb.cz
Dr. Keith Prisbrey
Univ. of Idaho, Moscow, USA
pris@uidaho.edu
Dr. Andrew M. Robertson
Robertson GeoConsultants, (INFO-MINE), Vancouver, Canada
andyr@info-mine.com
Dr. Damian Schofield
Nottingham Univ., England
endzs@unix.ccc.nottingham.ac.uk
Dr. Hasan Sevim
Southern Illinois Univ., Carbondale, USA
sevim@engr.siu.edu
Prof. Aurelian Simionescu
Tech. Univ. Petrosani, Petrosani, Romania madear@utp.sfos.ro
Dr. Raj Singhal
Science Advisor, Calgary, Canada
singhal@agt.net
Gordon Smith CSIR, Johannesburg, South Africa
GLSMITH@csir.co.za
Dr. Ertugrul Topuz
Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, Virginia, USA
topuz@vt.edu
Dr. Nick Vagenas
Laurentian Univ., Sudbury, Canada
NVAGENAS@NICKEL.LAURENTIAN.CA
Prof. Ludvig Wilke
Tech. Univ. Berlin, Berlin, Germany
wilke@coal.bg.tu-berlin.de
Dr. Tuncel M. Yegulalp
Henry Krumb School of Mines, Columbia Univ., USA
yegulalp@columbia.edu
Dr. Jon Yingling
Mining Dept, U of Kentucky, Lexington, USA
jjyinglin@engr.uky.edu