“Mining Interruption” tackles the question of how to make sense of disaster by exploring the Soma mine disaster. On May 13, 2014, an explosion in the Eynez underground lignite coal mine caused a fire that blocked the exit, sealing in 301 mineworkers who died of carbon monoxide poisoning in the town of Soma, in the city of Manisa, in Aegean Turkey. While the European Union was becoming relatively greener next door, coal extraction had begun to increase in Turkey after the Justice and Development Party [Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi] came to power in early 2000s. The relative decline of coal in the Global North paved the way for increased amounts of internal coal extraction and consumption in the energy geographies of the Global South and other non-Western countries as well as of Indigenous lands. The shift created biopolitically, socially, and technologically renewed forms of exploitation of labor, bodies, and nature, which contextualize the Soma mine disaster. Based on 18 months of ethnographic fieldwork and 68 open-ended interviews conducted in the Soma Coal Basin, this dissertation presents one constellation of the disaster by exploring four figures—The Accidented, the Bride, the Deserving, and the Striker—both as effects and as ongoing temporalities of the disaster. It contributes to critical disaster studies by defining and studying disaster not as a category of event, but as a concept through which multiple temporalities, lived experiences, and knowledges hang together. This loose definition of disaster is complemented by a reinterpretation of Walter Benjamin’s take on one of Bertolt Brecht’s most important dramaturgical techniques: interruption. In the dissertation, interruption is re-conceptualized as an experiential (hence temporal) concept that captures out-of-the-ordinary moments or flashes that interrupt everyday life in a way that permits a reevaluation of historical-material conditions. Interruptions are openings through which people may or may not follow an accidental course of action in order to overcome, better deal with, or politically respond to their conditions. The multiplicity of interruptions that are integral to the ongoing Soma mine disaster intersect with labor, fossil fuel production and its toxic effects, disability/debility, gendered oppression, disaster management, and social assistance. Some of these interruptions are experienced as rupturing events while others are perceived below the threshold of the event as such—as noneventful or not-so-eventful sensibilities, intensities and material changes. Each figure in question is a constellation in itself, a web of interdependencies, ruptures and materialities formed among human beings, state actors, coal, land, tobacco and other plants, limbs, organs, and names. In “The Accidented,” by examining mineworkers’ experiences and the terminology of becoming accidented (a direct translation of the term kazalanmak [in infinitive form]) through work accidents, the dissertation presents a critique both of existing disability assessment techniques and processes, and of understandings of disability as identity, which peripheralize labor-related and other experiences of (dis)ability and debility. In “The Bride,” by surveying the pervasive rumors about the widows of the 301 mineworkers, and their naming by the townspeople as “the brides,” the dissertation studies the differential treatment of the families of the 301 and the rest of the mining community through the state’s twofold disaster management strategy, and the ways in which people deal with this treatment through gossip, resentment, and kinship ties. In so doing, the dissertation also explores how affinal kinship relations have been transformed in the region due to the rise of coal mining, which coincides with the heightened neoliberalization of agriculture. In “The Deserving,” by investigating the materiality and movement of the lignite coal that is known as “Soma coal,” the dissertation articulates the ways in which the lives and desires of working-class and peasant communities have been reshaped through coercion, patronage, ideological interpellation, and the subjectivizing effects of Soma coal. It presents Soma coal as a pedagogical infrastructure that has emerged through the materiality of coal, and the regimes and networks of labor and welfare provision in contemporary Turkey. Finally, through the figure of “The Striker,” the dissertation examines the three-year long compensation struggle and protests of Soma and Ermenek mineworkers (2019–2021) as a set of emergency strikes that interrupted various processes, technologies, social networks, and modes of life that are formally and/or really subsumed within capital. The concept of “emergency strike” is used in order to encapsulate a form of strike that emerges with whatever means available in a given context, and as a collective act of seizing perceived last chances. This discussion builds on a recent wave of theorization concerning forms of unconventional strike that aim to disarticulate mechanisms and processes of real subsumption and/or state sovereignty. The dissertation shows how mineworkers organized against the backdrop of the Soma mine disaster. In doing so, it demonstrates how mineworkers re-exceptionalized their living and working conditions under a state of exception that has become the rule in Turkey since the 2016 coup attempt while it had already become the rule in the Soma Basin after May 13, 2014.

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Recently, an efficient resource model updating framework was proposed with the aim of improving the raw material quality control and process efficiency in any type of mining operation. This includes the integration of online-sensor measurements that are obtained during the production into the resource model. The concept has been applied in a coal mining environment with the aim of identifying local impurities in a coal seam and to improve the prediction of coal quality attributes in neighbouring blocks. The goal of this presentation is to demonstrate how the use of the resource model updating framework can provide added value for the mining industry. Both economical and environmental considerations are taken into account when the added value is investigated.

This study proposes an approach for land degradation assessment for an abandoned coal mine by using geospatial information technologies. The land degradation assessment focuses on two major changes: topographical and Land Use and Land Cover (LULC). For this purpose, stereo aerial photos, Worldview-1, Landsat and ASTER images, Terrestrial Laser Scanning (TLS) data, Global Positioning System (GPS) data, and ancillary maps were used for abandoned Ovacik surface coal mine. Volume of excavations and fillings, drainage network deviations, and slope instabilities were the investigated topographical disturbances by comparison of the Digital Elevation Models (DEM) for pre- and post-mining stages. Using aerial photos and Worldview-1 satellite image, LULC maps were prepared based on the same time period. Then areal extent and spatial pattern of the LULC change was calculated and mapped by post classification comparison method. The results of land degradation assessment show that there was a significant topographical disturbance and LULC change in the research area. Particularly, three dump areas with a total volume of 2,334,878 m3 were identified by DEM subtraction. It was found that stream network around the primary dump site shifted towards south with a maximum displacement of 60m. Slope analysis reveals that slopes higher that 60 degrees were mainly observed in excavation area with 81 percent. LULC change study showed that the forest area decreased an amount of 106,485 m2 from 1951 to 2008. However / by means of the forestation efforts in dump sites, an amount of 106,012 m2 forest land was recovered.

Die Arbeit fängt mit einer Beschreibung des Zustands der Kohlenbergbauindustrie weltweit und des zukünftigen Bedarfes für Kohle an. Danach folgt eine allgemeine Beschreibung des Restrukturierungsprozesses des Kohlenbergbaus in Rumänien und eine vertiefende Untersuchung der Situation im Schiltal infolge des Umstrukturierungsprozesses. Die schwierige sozioökonomische Lage im Schiltal braucht konkrete Lösungen; das Potenzial der Region bietet die Möglichkeit für zukünftige Entwicklungen. Eine vollständige, umfangreiche Analyse und ein Entwicklungskonzept wurden durchgeführt bzw. entwickelt. Es werden sowohl die Entwicklung von alternativen Wirtschaftstätigkeiten, als auch die Modernisierung und Rentabilisierung des traditionellen Bergbaus begründet.

A comprehensive study of accident records which have occured in Coal Mining Industries of Europe and U. S. A are analysed. The intention of the research was to establish relationships between the various accidents and prevention methods adopted by each country are evaluated and to assess the impact of industrial legislation in these various countries on accident rate are examined. The study analyses in paricular the fatal accident rate, and major and minor rate. The Major health hazards associated with coal mining are described in detail and discusses together with the Measurement of safety performance and its application in the Safety field. The study also examines the role of human factors in accidents also includes a summaries of fatal and major injury rates for 46 countries. Arising from the research a number of recommendations for improving safety are requires further research are indentified.

One of the most significant goals in coal mining technology research is the automation of underground coal mining machinery. A current challenge with automating underground coal mining machinery is measuring and maintaining a coal mining horizon. The coal mining horizon is the horizontal path the machinery follows through the undulating coal seam during the mining operation. A typical mining practice is to leave a thin remnant of coal unmined in order to maintain geological stability of the cutting face. If the remnant layer is too thick, resources are wasted as the unmined coal is permanently unrecoverable. If the remnant layer is too thin, the product is diluted by mining into the overburden and there is an increased risk of premature roof fall which increases danger. The main challenge therefore is to develop a robust sensing method to estimate the thickness of thin remant coal layers. This dissertation addresses this challenge by presenting a pattern recognition methodology to estimate thin remnant coal layer thickness using ground penetrating radar (GPR). The approach is based upon a novel feature vector, derived from the bispectrum, that is used to characterise the early-time segment of 1D GPR data. The early-time segment is dominated by clutter inherent in GPR systems such as antenna crosstalk, ringdown and ground-bounce. It is common practice to either time-gate the signal, disregard the clutter by rendering the early-time segment unusable, or configure the GPR equipment to minimise the clutter effects which in turn reduces probing range. Disregarding the early-time signal essentially imposes a lower thickness limit on traditional GPR layer thickness estimators. The challenges of estimating thin layer thickness is primarily due to these inherent clutter components. Traditional processing strategies attempt to minimise the clutter using pre-processing techniques such as the subtraction of a calibration signal. The proposed method, however, treats the clutter as a deterministic but unknown signal with additive noise. Hence the proposed approach utilises the energy from the clutter and monitors change in media from subtle changes in the signal shape. Two complementary processing methods important to horizon sensing have been also proposed. These methods, near-surface interface detection and antenna height estimation, may be used as pre-validation tools to increase the robustness of the thickness estimation technique. The proposed methods have been tested with synthetic data and validated with real data obtained using a low power 1.4 GHz GPR system and a testbed with known conditions. With the given test system, it is shown that the proposed thin layer thickness estimator and near-surface interface detector outperform the traditional matched filter based processing methods for layers less than 5 cm in thickness. It is also shown that the proposed antenna height estimator outperforms the traditional height estimator for heights less than 7 cm. These new methods provide a means for reliably extending layer thickness estimation to the thin layer case where traditional approaches are known to fail.

The work is engageded in comparison of flora in both recultivated and areas under succesion in Most coal basin. The mapped areas are situated not far from the towns Most and Duchcov. The coalmining and following recultivation have been handed down there for many years. The first reference to coalmining in Most region comes back to 1613. All kinds of these days mining devastate the landscape, that?s why the restoration of it must be done. The aim of the work is to find out and evaluate the latest vegetation composition in he selected areas, to classify territories according to Catalogue of biotopes, and to carry out the contemporary conditions of landscape character in Most region.

The workers are exposed to aerosol particles in a coal strip mine. These particles are usually generated by the Bucket-wheel excavators which break the mined rock. The goal of the thesis thesis was to compare the concentrations of atmospheric aerosol particles - PM on the Bucket-wheel excavator Schrs 1320, the Stacker ZPDH 6300 and the Bucket- wheel excavator K 800/N2 in the coal quarry Doly Nástup Tušimice, and then to answer the questions what is the main cause of increased concentration PMx and whether the mining machines are different from each other. The measurement was realized stepwise on every mining machine in the time period from 12. 8. to 2. 9. 2016. The concentrations of PM1, PM2,5 and PM10 were measured by two portable laser nephelometers in the cab drivers and the outdoor walkway of the mining machines with the integration time of 1 minute. The air temperature and the relative humidity were monitored in both types of settings in every five minutes. The PMx concentrations variability is usually determined by the type of work and by the type of smoking. Consequently, PM concentrations on the mining machines were compared at the morning exchanges and evening exchanges, during the outdoor cleaning by sweeping, the indoor cleaning by hoovering and during the smoking. The highest...

Master thesis deals with current trends on coal market, relationships between prices of coal and prices of other commodities, forecasting of coal prices in fifteen years horizon utilizing statistical tools and business valuation of a company from coal mining industry. Master thesis further analyzes a sensitivity of the company value on changes in projected prices of coal and other commodities.