TerraScan AI: Real-Time Mining-Site Locator for North America & South Africa

TerraScan aims to develop an AI-powered platform that provides real-time monitoring and location intelligence for mining operations across Africa and North America. In this 4-week challenge, you will join a collaborative team of 50 AI engineers from all around the world.

The problem

Mining operations across North America & South Africa face significant challenges in monitoring site activities, ensuring worker safety, and maintaining environmental compliance. Current solutions often rely on fragmented systems that don’t provide comprehensive real-time insights. The lack of integrated location intelligence makes it difficult to:

1. Track personnel and equipment in underground mining environments
2. Monitor environmental impacts in real-time
3. Optimize resource extraction and equipment utilization
4. Ensure compliance with increasingly stringent regulations
5. Respond quickly to potential safety hazards

This challenge is particularly acute as many open-pit mines transition to underground operations, where the cost per tonne is increasing dramatically, demanding a step-change in productivity through increased automation.

Impact of the Problem

The absence of advanced real-time monitoring capabilities in mining operations leads to:

• Safety Risks: Without real-time location data, evacuating miners during emergencies becomes more challenging, potentially putting lives at risk.
• Operational Inefficiencies: Mining companies waste significant time and resources due to suboptimal equipment utilization and resource extraction methods.
• Environmental Concerns: Inadequate monitoring leads to difficulties in detecting and mitigating environmental impacts of mining activities.
• Regulatory Compliance Challenges: Both  South Africa and North American mining operations face increasingly strict regulations that require comprehensive monitoring and reporting.
• Economic Impact: The mining industry’s slow pace of digitization and data siloization results in missed opportunities for cost reduction and productivity improvements.

Project Goals

The TerraScan challenge aims to develop a comprehensive real-time mining site location platform with the following objectives:

Platform Architecture & Core Capabilities

• Design a scalable cloud architecture for real-time location tracking and monitoring
• Develop AI algorithms for processing multi-source data (satellite imagery, LiDAR, drone footage)
• Create visualization dashboards for real-time site monitoring and historical data analysis
• Establish security protocols for protecting sensitive mining operation data

Real-Time Monitoring Features

• Build detection systems for personnel, vehicles, and equipment in underground and surface mining environments
• Implement real-time environmental monitoring capabilities (air quality, water levels, ground stability)
• Develop anomaly detection algorithms to identify potential safety hazards or operational inefficiencies
• Create geofencing capabilities to prevent unauthorized access to dangerous areas

Integration & Deployment Framework

• Design APIs for integration with existing mining systems and IoT devices
• Develop a mobile application for field personnel to access critical information
• Create implementation templates for different mining environments (underground, open-pit)
• Build documentation and training materials for mining operators

Why join? The uniqueness of Omdena AI Innovation Challenges

A collaborative experience you never had in your working life! For the next eight weeks, you will build AI solutions to make a real-world impact and go through an entire data science project lifecycle. This covers problem scoping, data collection, and preparation, as well as modeling for deployment.

And the best part is that you will join a global and collaborative team of changemakers. Omdena AI Challenges are not a competition or hackathon but a real-world project that will take your experience of what is possible through collaboration to a new level.

Find more information on how an Omdena project works