Monitoring Of Geotechnical Instabilities at Deep Underground Mines, Case of Draa Sfar Mine, Morocco

The scope of this paper concerns the identification of underground geotechnical instabilities and the analysis of the rock mass monitoring data at deep underground mines, taking as a study case Draa Sfar mine in Morocco. In fact, geotechnical conditions complexity increases in the mine’s deeper levels. Therefore, rock mass behaviour analysis, on-site geotechnical instrumentation and continuous monitoring of the medium are strongly required to avoid geotechnical risks. In this context, this paper focuses on presenting, first, a general state of the art about the most frequent rock mass instabilities encountered in the underground media, their classification, and their monitoring methods. In the following section, this paper provides general information about Draa Sfar mine and presents its geotechnical monitoring data analysis. At the end, conclusions about the current monitoring results and perspectives about innovative instrumentation solutions are discussed. © 2022, Avestia Publishing. All rights reserved.