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Wells Fargo judgement and Tailings risks

We thought of Wells Fargo judgement and Tailings risks in follow-up to the recent judgement against a number of bank’s officers. The judgement cites widespread failure to: “identify the root cause of …misconduct”, “provide credible challenges to risk controls managers”, “timely evaluate the effectiveness of risk controls” and finally, “timely identify, address and escalate the risk management controls failures that threatened the safety, soundness and reputation…”. At first sight one may be tempted to dismiss this “banking-legal” stuff as not…

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Questions on ALARP studies at Tailings 2022

 Readers and conference delegates asked the following Questions on ALARP studies at Tailings 2022 and when they read a case study on ALARP optimization. National regulation compliance Are the results of an ALARP analysis consistent with national regulations and design requirements?  When we perform an ALARP analysis we consider local regulations. These will drive some a priori mitigative selections by the engineer of record. These bear on the nature and aim of mitigation stages  for the ALARP analysis. For instance,…

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ORE2 tailings results

We use archival information to formulate the ORE2_Tailings™ quality note and causality analysis. This includes site visits (when possible and if agreed), photographic historic documentation. Of course information will evolve in time, as new data may become available. Thus, one can use ORE2 tailings results to decide which aspects of the life of a considered structure to study. ORE2_Tailings™ results encompass various dam body’s probabilities. They correspond to the FoS yielded by available engineering analyses and the causality analysis. Here…

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General ORE2 tailings workflow

ORE2_Tailings™ is a quantitative risk assessment platform. Riskope designed it specifically for tailings systems (active and inactive). When we deploy ORE2_Tailings™ to a portfolio of dams, possibly over multiple properties, it allows for tactical and strategic planning. Our practice has shown that ORE2_Tailings™ and the general ORE2 tailings workflow, delivers results similar to those of common practice quantitative approaches (Event trees, Failure trees, Bowties). Furthermore ORE2_Tailings™  enables answering specific questions linked to the causality of potential failures, optimization of cost…

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Dam portfolio ORE2_Tailings support for ICMM standard on tailings management.

Dam portfolio ORE2_Tailings support for ICMM standard on tailings management (GISTM) is multifaceted. ORE2_Tailings™ is a risk assessment platform specifically Riskope designed specifically for tailings systems. When we deploy it to a portfolio of dams, possibly over multiple properties, it allows for tactical and strategic planning. We have already discussed the single dam case in relation to ICMM • Global Industry Standard on Tailings Management (2020)  and the conformance protocols. Today we present an example of deployment at portfolio level.…

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Risk Analysis of a European Tailings System

We recently reviewed a risk analysis of a European tailings system prepared for a NGO. Although the document is public, we will keep site, owner, NGO and author’s names confidential. Indeed, the aim of this blogpost is not to be polemic, but to foster better quality of such documents. The study encompasses studying four main archival documents and reviewing more than one thousand others. These confirmed the main documents data and interpretation. In addition the authors perfromed a site visit.…

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India dam break Facebook and fake news

India dam break Facebook and fake news finds its inspiration in a series of very recent events. Very unfortunately one of them, the Rishiganga dam collapse (https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-55969669), was mortiferous.  World-wide water storage structures are ageing A report by UNU-INWEH,  Ageing Water Storage Infrastructure: An Emerging Global Risk, provides an overview of the phenomenon. Indeed tens of thousands of existing large dams have reached 50 years of age. In addition, many others will approach 100 years. For instance, UK has the…

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The eternal confusion between tailings hazard and risks

A comment to a blogpost on tailings failures inspired this comment on the eternal confusion between tailings hazard and risks. Some voices are rising to state that the real number of tailings dams on the planet is around 35,000. Based on that number they then engage in a biased risk discourse. Indeed, we think those arguments are misleading and not helping the cause of tailings risk reduction. Let’s discuss why. The true number of tailings dams on the planet The number…

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