The Australian Government's Innovation Report

The millimetre wave radar stope monitor, developed by CRCMining, enables engineers to monitor the backfilling
of stopes — skyscraper-sized cavities up to 300 metres deep, with diameters of up to 45 metres.
The stope monitor fine-tunes the operation from a safe distance. In a typical mine that uses the long hole open stope
mining principle, up to 1.3 million tonnes of ore are extracted, and the resulting stope is backfilled before miners
move into neighbouring rock.
Before the stope monitor, engineers had to stop the backfilling process periodically and wait for the dust and
vapour to clear before they could use laser monitoring. Personnel also had to venture into the dangerous area
around the stope during the downtime.
The wave radar stope monitor comprises a hermetically sealed radar and a mirror scanner and uses the characteristics
of signals reflected from the floor and walls of the stope to generate a 3D snapshot of the void as it fills.
Engineers display the information on a remote computer, using the images to optimise the strength of the fill
by altering the proportions of the material in it and adjusting the packing. They can use more waste rock, cutting
costs and cleaning up the environment around the mine.
Mining industry partner, WMC Resources estimates that the prototype monitor trialled at the Olympic Dam mine
could save it millions of dollars a year.
Ecosystem-based monitoring of the Great Barrier Reef: The Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority
(GBRMPA) continues to take a multi-dimensional approach to monitoring different habitats throughout the
Great Barrier Reef Marine Park as well as socio-economic effects.
A component of this monitoring was workshopped by scientific and management agencies with interests in
the marine park, who discussed a broad range of ideas to monitor the effects of the network of no-take areas
resulting from the 2004 rezoning of the marine park. They proposed the focus should be on species targeted
by line fishing and also prey and benthic species.
Underwater visual census was chosen as the preferred method of monitoring and seven criteria were used to
choose candidate pairs of blue and new-green (no-take) offshore reefs in five regions. A further set of sites, on
inshore fringing blue and new-green reefs was chosen in addition to sites already monitored. The guiding premise
was that the project had to address management needs while being scientifically robust.
This project is vital to marine park management, as it is imperative for the GBRMPA to know how its management
strategies are performing. It also offers scientists an opportunity to investigate effects of no-take areas on a scale
never seen before.
Initial results indicate that the effects of zoning, at least for coral trout, are exceeding expectations in all regions
monitored. This is encouraging as it will ultimately have benefits for tourism and fishing industries that depend
on a healthy and resilient Great Barrier Reef Marine Park.
Cleaning-up Australian’s minerals industry: Australia’s minerals industry is expected to become cleaner and
more efficient as a result of a collaboration funded under the Australian Research Council’s (ARC) Linkage
Projects scheme.
Four high-performing research centres at the universities of South Australia, Melbourne, Newcastle and
Queensland will contribute to a $22.6 million research programme to be conducted by the Australian Mineral
Science Research Institute. The programme will address a number of problems of critical importance to Australia’s
major export industry.
Issues such as energy-efficient methods of extracting minerals from the earth, improved water use and waste
management practices and new methods of minerals processing will be explored.
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