SLOPE STABILITY 2009

CONFERENCE THEMES

The Organizing and Technical Committees of Rock Slope Stability 2009, with the advice of industry representatives, has selected the themes and topics listed below for structuring the technical program of the Symposium. They reflect the main concerns and issues of the industry and follow the life of mine sequence from project development to closure that is followed in the Open Pit Slope Design Guidelines book that will be released by the LOP Research Project at the Symposium.

• Fundamentals of slope design
• Formulation of slope designs
• Field data collection procedures
• Geological and Structural models
• Rock mass and Geotechnical models
• Hydrogeology and ground water implications
• Assessing and reporting data uncertainty
• Slope failure mechanisms
• Slope design criteria and design methods
• Mine planning aspects of slope design
• Performance assessment and slope monitoring techniques
• Controlled blasting techniques
• Blast damage mechanisms
• Risk management for open pit mining
• Open pit closure

Part of the activities to be included within the frame of Rock Slope Stability 2009 is the public launching of the book “Guidelines for Open Pit Slope Design” . The book is an outcome of the LOP Research Project. It has taken three years to prepare and is comprised of 14 chapters that follow the life of mine sequence from project development to closure. Each chapter is written by an industry practitioner with specific experience in the topic being described. The purpose of the book is to be a new generation guideline that links innovative mining geomechanics research with best practice, outlining for today's practitioners what works best in different situations (and why), what doesn't work (and why not), and what is the best approach to satisfy best practice in a range of situations.