Abstract
The increasing severity of tailings dam failures and potential impacts of the existing ones require more stringent safety criteria at mining operations. There is a significant degree of underreporting of tailings dam failures. In many cases, when reported, there is no information on many critical factors, compromising the efficient development of safety regulations. Several studies have tried to identify the causes of major tailings dam failures worldwide. Different approaches have been used based on a statistical analysis of the available data, focusing on time and space, causes, and consequences. This work proposes a data analysis of failures based on the severity coding system and mining economic growth metric. The reported cases of tailings dam failure in the past have been collected and re-evaluated thoroughly to understand the distribution of the incident better and establish relationships or identify patterns. The analysis focused on the characteristics of the tailings storage facilities, the causes for failure, the type of accident, and the regulatory framework, both in mining and environmental fields.
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de Lurdes Dinis, M., Fiúza, A. (2023). Tailings Dams: The Environmental Risks and Failures Management. In: Chaminé, H.I., Fernandes, J.A. (eds) Advances in Geoengineering, Geotechnologies, and Geoenvironment for Earth Systems and Sustainable Georesources Management. Advances in Science, Technology & Innovation. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-25986-9_40
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-25986-9_40
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