The future of dam safety

After the collapse of Brumadinho Dam, the mining industry has been under intense scrutiny. Although the safety and infrastructure stability of tailings dams has always been extremely important, now, with the world watching, it is more crucial than ever that dam monitoring programmes are put in place.

Continuously seeking new ways to utilise our expert remote sensing capabilities in order to provide our global client-base with accurate and up-to-date intelligence on their assets, we have extended our service portfolio to now include MOTIONMONITOR. Designed specifically for the mining industry, MotionMonitor will provide TSF managers and ESG compliance officers with a platform where they can access the latest ground movement measurements around their tailings dam facilities, across numerous locations, to perform regular monitoring that can identify issues which may have previously gone undetected.

Users can access their data through an interactive and intuitive platform, designed and developed within Hexagon Geospatial’s M.App Enterprise. As a privately hosted cloud platform, it is perfect for organisations who want to analyse data in a secure environment and share their results through engaging visualisations.

M.App Enterprise provides an interface where the user can view the base Terra Motion APSIS interferometric displacement data, and dive into the analysis, visualising displacement over time and querying point displacement data. Points of interest can be further analysed using inverse velocity analysis to predict potential failure dates. It can also be used to visualise insights derived from optical imagery analysis, showing change detection and potential seepage sites. All this information is contained within a simple, easy to use, data rich dashboard beneficial to GIS specialists, engineers, and senior management.


Tailings dams can be unpredictable and combining remote sensing and AI technology is an innovative technique to provide a clearer and in-depth understanding of land and infrastructure stability. When even the smallest changes can jeopardise the stability of a dam’s infrastructure, it is crucial to be able to record even millimetric ground movements.

The integration of MOTIONMONITOR into an organisation will allow users to pinpoint potential failures and implement damage limitation strategies, prioritising high-risk areas that could be instrumental in preventing avoidable disasters, like Brumadinho, in the future.

For more information or to book a demonstration of our MotionMonitor service please visit our webpage here.

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