OFFICIAL ADVANCEMENTS IN GEOTECHNICAL MONITORING: LEVERAGING CROSSFERTILIZATION BETWEEN AEROSPACE AND MINING FOR SUSTAINABLE RESOURCE EXTRACTION *M.K. Elmouttie1, Y. Duan1, P. Dean1, G. O’Connor1, W. Stasinowsky1, B. Zhou1, M. van de Werken. 1CSIRO Mineral Resources Research Unit, Australia, (*Presenting author: marc.elmouttie@csiro.au) ABSTRACT Geotechnical monitoring plays a pivotal role in ensuring the safety, efficiency, and environmental sustainability of mining operations. As global demand for minerals escalates, the challenges of managing rock mass stability, mitigating hazards like slope failures and rock bursts, and optimizing resource recovery intensify. This paper will present current research and development in innovative monitoring technologies that integrate real-time data acquisition, advanced analytics, and multi-sensor fusion to address these issues in both open-pit and underground mining environments. Several sensing modalities will be discussed in detail, including vision-based technologies for surface change detection, distributed fiber optic sensing for passive seismic detection, strain and temperature sensing, and ground-penetrating radar (GPR) for subsurface and borehole imaging. These tools can be integrated for different geotechnical sensing and monitoring applications, including slope deformation monitoring which estimates true 3D deformation vector, rockfall detection, geotechnical structure mapping in the subsurface. Target use cases include slope deformation monitoring for open pit and tailing storage facilities. The cross-fertilization between mining and aerospace industries will be referenced and its role in providing inspiration for the sensor fusion techniques outlined in the paper. KEYWORDS Computer vision, Radar, Seismic, Distributed sensing 1. INTRODUCTION Geotechnical monitoring is a cornerstone of modern mining practice, underpinning operational safety, productivity, and environmental stewardship. Open-pit and underground mines are inherently dynamic environments where rock mass instability can lead to significant slope failures and rockfalls, impacting not only production but also introducing hazards to personnel, equipment, and infrastructure. Industry guidelines for slope monitoring consistently emphasize the need for proactive, continuous surveillance to detect precursors of instability and enable timely intervention (Sharon & Eberhardt, 2020). These guidelines advocate for integrated monitoring frameworks that combine realtime data acquisition, robust interpretation, and defensible decision-making processes to manage geotechnical risk across the mine life cycle. In high-value operations such as iron ore and metalliferous mines, where slope geometries can extend for kilometres and
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