Innovative Approach for Monitoring Underground Excavations at San Xavier Underground Mine Laboratory

Assessing and making decisions in underground mines is crucial and is difficult due to the harsh environment and the limitation of accessibility. Monitoring plays an important role in assessing ground conditions to ensure safety and efficiency. Through consistent monitoring, a safe interoperable underground mine can be achieved, but to ensure coherent and valid monitoring, there are factors that need to be considered. The approach taken for monitoring with technologies used in it can highly impact the safety, productivity, and understanding of ground conditions. Visualizations designed with principles of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), can improve knowledge, and aid situational awareness. Focusing on monitoring systems and interfaces that are user-friendly and reliable can help improve overall underground conditions. This paper proposes a monitoring framework that uses desktop and Virtual Reality (VR) to display rock movement in the San Xavier (SX) Underground Mine Laboratory through a digital twin.