Nome’s RockMonitor XR system feeds continuous, real-time strata displacement data to centralised smart centres, enabling safer decision-making from a secure, remote location.
Nome’s strata monitoring product suite is built on a simple yet impactful idea: Save Lives, Revolutionise Industries.
By harnessing digitalisation and automation, the company’s technology delivers real-time insights that reduce reliance on manual checks and help to ensure faster, data-driven responses, and significantly improve underground safety.
This type of monitoring has traditionally relied on manual inspections and isolated instruments, which often only provide snapshots in time. While these tools have long supported safety efforts, they can be limited in their ability to detect subtle trends or deliver continuous real-time insight. Automated alerts and continuous digital monitoring mean risks can be identified and addressed before they escalate, creating a safer, more predictable underground environment.
That’s where Nome’s RockMonitor XR comes to the fore, offering a smarter, safer approach to ground stability. Designed to meet the need for continuous, reliable strata displacement data, the RockMonitor XR package consists of telltales – a fail-safe device used to monitor rock movement – installed directly into mine roofs, backs or sidewalls.
Each telltale features two or four anchor points, allowing it to detect movement across multiple layers of rock. These sensors connect to an underground controller that transmits data in real-time to a central server, giving decision-makers instant visibility via real-time alerts, without the need for manual checks.
The system also integrates seamlessly with a mine’s own smart centres, allowing teams to monitor strata conditions alongside other critical mine data – all from a single control room.
This capability is an essential part of RockMonitor XR because it removes the need to send personnel underground for routine checks, reducing exposure to risk while ensuring potential hazards are identified as early as possible. It also delivers clear operation benefits in that reducing reliance on manual checks helps to improve production efficiency and minimise downtime.
This continuous flow of information is enabled by Nome’s Core Applications software, which provides a seamless connection between the underground controller and surface systems, allowing for the real-time transmission of strata displacement data.
The system logs all activity and triggers alarms when movement exceeds pre-set thresholds, ensuring timely responses to emerging risks. Live and historical data can also be accessed from a single platform, with detailed graphing tools that give operators deep insight into ground behaviour.
The impact of Nome’s RockMonitor XR becomes even clearer when seen in action.
Workers at a Tier 1 underground mine where the system was deployed were sometimes put at risk due to the safety teams’ reliance on manual inspections, which also often led to missing early signs of danger.
When the mine installed Nome’s real-time system to counter the issue, it began receiving automated rock movement alerts at its surface control room. One such alert prompted the evacuation of an area that later experienced a significant roof collapse.
If traditional methods were still being utilised in this instance, it’s likely personnel injuries or even fatalities could have occurred.
This example, just one of many, serves to highlight the critical role advanced monitoring technologies play in modern mining operations.
Nome’s RockMonitor XR enables mines to move from reactive safety measures to proactive risk management, protecting personnel and production.
This feature appeared in the September-October edition of Safe to Work.