Watch Out for the Tailings Pond, a Sharp Edge Hanging over Our Heads: Lessons Learned and Perceptions from the Brumadinho Tailings Dam Failure Disaster

Abstract

A catastrophic tailings dam failure disaster occurred in Brumadinho, Brazil on 25 January 2019, which resulted in over 270 casualties, 24,000 residents evacuated, and a huge economic loss. Environmental concerns were raised for the potential pollution of water due to tailings waste entering the Paraopeba River. In this paper, a detailed analysis has been carried out to investigate the disaster conditions of the Brumadinho dam failure using satellite images with different spatial resolutions. Our in-depth analysis reveals that the hazard chain caused by this failure contained three stages, namely dam failure, mudflow, and the hyperconcentrated flow in the Paraopeba River. The variation characteristics of turbidity of the Rio Paraopeba River after the disaster have also been investigated using high-resolution remote sensing images, followed by a qualitative analysis of the impacts on the downstream reservoir of the Retiro Baixo Plant that was over 300 km away from the dam failure origin. It is believed that, on the one hand, the lack of dam stability management at the maintenance stage was the main cause of this disaster. On the other hand, the abundant antecedent precipitation caused by extreme weather events should be a critical triggering factor. Furthermore, the spatiotemporal pattern mining of global tailings dam failures revealed that the Brumadinho dam disaster belonged to a Consecutive Hot Spot area, suggesting that the regular drainage inspection, risk assessment, monitoring, and early warning of tailings dam in Consecutive Hot Spot areas still need to be strengthened for disaster mitigation.

Public remotely sensed data raise concerns about history of failed Jagersfontein dam

“…Tailings continued to flow along ~ 56 km of streams and rivers causing some of them to overflow and take on a pale colour. Pre and post-failure natural colour images and sediment index 19 , 20 renderings strongly suggest that the tailings had reached the Kalkfontein dam reservoir by 12 September (Fig. 6 ).…”

Paradoxes and dilemmas of responsible leadership in the mining industries of emerging economies – it is complex

“…Numerous incidents of mine dam failures have led to environmental and social catastrophes (WISE Uranium Project, 2021). For instance, the Mariana and Brumadinho tailings dam failures in Brazil killed hundreds of people, displaced thousands and caused extensive environmental damage (Cheng et al, 2021). Reports alleged that leaders were made aware of potential risks long before the events, but pursued cost reductions and productivity gains rather than heed the warnings (Phillips, 2018).…”

Image Extraction of Tailings Pond Guided by Artificial Intelligence Support Vector Machine

“…Remote sensing images of multiple times and multiple resolutions were used, from macro to micro, from whole to part, real-time monitoring of changes in mines in the study area. Reference [29] used Jixi mining area as the experimental research area and used the combination of ERDAS software and MapGIS software to carry out remote sensing processing of the collapse information in the study area. In addition, topographic maps, remote sensing images, and other data are used to verify the study area on the spot to verify whether the extraction of the collapsed area is correct.…”