Dear Ryan, please receive this open letter to the organizer of the tailings dam round robin exercise. It explains our position on the round robin exercise you have promoted. As you know we enthusiastically adhered to your round robin proposal although we found a bit odd that such an exercise would be led by a consultant, thus not an impartial entity. Very quickly we started asking for more data, as the knowledge base seemed rather generic. We were not surprised…
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Multi dimensional Consequences approaches take into consideration the varied losses that a failure can generate. Thus they allow for a more thorough and rational evaluation of a failure potential consequences. Indeed, by breaking down the consequences into distinct dimensions, such as environmental, economic, and social, an additive evaluation of multi dimensional consequences can provide a more realistic assessment of the risks associated with a failure. This approach also allows for greater consideration of the long-term implications of the failure. These…
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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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As everyone else, we got excited about the new ChatGPT so we tried OpenAI’s ChatGPT applied to tailings dams and associated risks. OpenAI is San Francisco-based research laboratory. Its founders and donors are, among others, Elon Musk and Peter Thiel, along with technology companies like Microsoft. ChatGPT is a publicly available free app that generates “human-like” written replies. The acronym GPT stands for “Generative Pre-trained Transformer” . Note that our colleague Mike Porter started a thread on ChatGPT on LinkedIn. Numerous members…
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Oftentimes we hear people objecting to quantitative risk assessments (QRA). Thus today we show three cases where quantitative risk assessment was paramount. Now, do not get mistaken, those are not the only cases where QRA is useful. However, they are particularly significant. Risk review of a mining mega project New projects are always exciting. Therefore their promoters oftentimes get emotionally attached to them to the point of forgetting that they may be exposed to significant risks. The use of codes…
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Hunger stones refresh our short memory, they are indeed messages straight from the past. Those who endured droughts and resulting famine left them for their successors. Indeed, the hunger stones tell stories of severe hardship due to droughts. Of course they become visible when it is too late, as they are normally lying below water level (Hungersteine in the Rhine – Memory of great need – Experience Worms (worms-erleben.de). Today we will discuss if these events actually constitute divergence from…
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A Case Study on ALARP Optimization is the title our paper at Tailings 2022. The combination of probability of failure and consequences generates the potential risks of dams and other structures. Designers and owners should design, mitigate and monitor throughout the life and toward closure of dams. The GISTM indicates an ALARP objective for mitigation. In the paper we use an anonymized case to show how a dam’s probability of failure and risks evolve with its raising. In a second…
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Zero to 300 in thirty is not the performance of a new sensational sport car. And we are talking about thirty years, not seconds! Actually, zero to 300 in thirty years is the cumulative experience Riskope and its founders have dealing with tailings dams risk assessments all over the world. You should not understand it as an “average” evaluation either, as the evolution has been trending towards exponential. Let’s discover together what we are talking about. Zero to 300 in…
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