The PHD Project that changed slope monitoring

For geotechnical professionals who have recently entered the industry, it could be hard to imagine a time when the only option for slope monitoring was point measurement-based systems, which only provided spot data for a specific moment in time.

Friction hears from GroundProbe CEO and founder, David Noon, how a PhD project revolutionised slope monitoring.

GroundProbe CEO and Founder David Noon.

Beginning as an industry-funded PhD project at the University of Queensland, Australia, the aim was to develop a system capable of detecting and predicting slope failures without the need for physical access to slope walls as well as providing real-time monitoring with sub-millimetre accuracy.

We started as a group of university friends with creative engineering minds. We invented real-time radar technologies that made mining safer, but it was when the technology was showcased to industry bodies that the industry need of the technology was truly realised.

In 1997, the Australian Coal Association Research Program provided funding to the university to focus the development of this project, specifically the real-world application of the university’s radar technology in detecting slope failures that did not require physical access to slope walls, and provided real-time monitoring in a broad range of conditions.

The patented Slope Stability Radar (SSR) was commercialised in 2001 coinciding with the inception of the GroundProbe brand.

We launched with one Slope Stability Radar and had one customer in 2001.

Since then, we have continued to innovate and developed several different SSRs for a range of monitoring-specific applications, as well as two laser technology systems – one for open-cut deformation monitoring and one for underground convergence monitoring.

In 2015, we established GSS: Geotechnical Support Services, which has grown to be one of the largest assembled teams of geotechnical mining professionals in the world with more than 130 qualified engineers and radar operators supporting customers across the world.

Our products have effectively detected the amount, size and trend of wall movement for hundreds of mine sites across the globe.

In more recent years, our systems have also been deployed to monitor the stability of tailings dams. The risk of loss of life, decreased productivity, environmental impacts and reputational impacts are all strong motivators for mine owners to implement and adopt tailings dam monitoring.

Across all of our deployed radars and customers, and in our entire 21-year history, I am most proud to say that our systems have never failed to detect a collapse, fulfilling our ultimate aim of keeping people and communities safe.