Estimation of potential failure risks in a mine slope using indicator kriging

Indicator kriging has been applied to the study of failure mechanisms in a mine slope in Minas Gerais, Brazil, to estimate potential failure risks in limited areas along this slope. Timbopeba Mine, Vale Company, is an open pit iron mine situated in the Quadrilátero Ferrífero, a very important mining district in Minas Gerais. A slope excavated in quartzite with a maximum height of 200 m at the time of this study, has presented many failure problems involving the sliding of blocks formed by discontinuities. These blocks are of limited size in comparison to the dimensions of the overall slope. They appear along the entire slope, wherever discontinuity orientations have led to the kinematic feasibility of these blocks. Geostatistics permits the estimation of local failure probability distributions associated to these local failures, which would not be possible with traditional statistical models. The geostatistical method employed in this study, indicator kriging, is quite suitable because it is unnecessary to assume a particular global distribution of the phenomena being modeled. The model was used for locating areas with a great tendency for sliding failure, as it considers the local spatial variability of discontinuity orientations. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.