Grant: Collaborative Research and Development Grants

Every worker's health is influenced by biological, physical, psychological, and other individual traits. This percentage is much higher in the stressful mining sector where work is arduous and often dangerous. No surprise, this workplace fatigue is the primary reason for increased number of various accidents in the mining industry. Every year, the mining industry sees significant losses in terms of human lives and valuable infrastructure due to these incidents. Despite employing only 1% of the global workforce, the mining industry is responsible for approximately 8% of work-related fatalities worldwide (8.2% in Canada). Unfortunately, many of these are preventable. Although technological advancements and tighter regulations have helped in alleviating mining incidents, still the number is too high, especially when over 400,000 worker mostly from remote communities are employed by the mining industry. A human centric approach is necessary to understand the issues and to improve the well-being of miners. This in turn will reduce the number and the impact of occupational hazards in the mining industry. In this project, a comprehensive remote monitoring system will be developed to collect biomedical data from miners in addition to their location and environment data in real time. This multi-sensor data will be fused and Machine learning algorithms will be developed to analyze and interpret the collected data. This will create better understanding of the correlations among miners' ability to function efficiently, environmental factors, their age, work duration and other physiological conditions. The outcome will not only be used to ensure long- and short-term wellbeing of miners, it will also help to alleviate accidents and improve productivity and optimize resource usage in mines. This will be done in collaboration with PBE Canada, a global leader for communication and monitoring systems for mines and tunnels.