Jan Blachowski

Wrocław University of Science and Technology | WUT · Faculty of Geoengineering, Mining and Geology

The study presents results of surface displacements calculated with the PSInSAR technique for the area of the former Wałbrzych Hard Coal Basin (WHCB) in SW Poland. Underground mining of hard coal took place there until the late 90'ties of the 20 th Century. In accordance with the present state of knowledge, secondary deformations are a common pheno...

Land subsidence in the area of the city of Walbrzych (SW Poland) has been a consequence of underground mining of hard coal. Exploitation of multiseam deposit took place for several 100 years and ended in the late 90’ties of the twentieth century. During this time, many buildings and constructions were affected by subsidence-related damages and new...

The research aimed to assess the accessibility of a brown coal deposit for development with respect to environmental and land use functions of the terrain. A combination of the Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) and the Weighted Linear Combination methodology was proposed to determine weights of environmental and spatial (land use) factors conditio...

Underground coal mining causes surface changes such as subsidence and land transformation. The knowledge of the character of subsidence in the past and in the present provides useful information for example for spatial development. In this paper the methodology of determining surface height changes based on cartographic modelling in geographic info...

Discontinuous deformations, such as sinkholes, pose significant challenges in post-mining areas due to their unpredictable nature and potential hazard to surface development and the safety of local communities. Therefore, monitoring the post-mining regions should be treated as a continuing task. This study addresses the ongoing problem of sinkhole...

The goal of this study was to develop a model describing the relationship between the ground-displacement-caused tremors induced by underground mining, and mining and geological factors using the Random Forest Regression machine learning method. The Rudna mine (Poland) was selected as the research area, which is one of the largest deep copper ore m...

Rozpoznawanie obszarów pogórniczych i ocena ich wpływu na otaczające środowisko jest zagadnieniem wieloaspektowym. W granicach analizowanego obszaru (rejon Wału Mużakowskiego) na skomplikowanie prowadzonych prac badawczych wpływa złożona budowa geologiczna obszaru, a także zróżnicowanie robót górniczych, które prowadzono w tym rejonie w przeszłości...

Due to an urgent need to reduce the fast-progressing climate changes, a rapid, standardized and replicable solution for the infrastructure restructuring of the heat demand coverage of buildings at the district and city levels must be developed. As more and more communities in Europe, especially in Germany, are obligated to have plans for coverage o...

This dataset was gathered using a wheeled mobile robot in two distinct locations: predominantly textureless or dark corridors within a university campus and tunnels of an inactive underground site in Walim. The dataset comprises around 150 GB of raw data, including images captured by multiple co-calibrated monocular and stereo cameras, a thermal ca...

Due to an urgent need for reducing the fast progressing climate changes, a rapid, standardized and replicable solution for the infrastructure restructuring of heat demand coverage of buildings at district and city level must be developed. As more and more communities in Europe, especially in Germany, are obligated to have plans for coverage of heat...

The Babina mine closed almost 50 years ago, and reclamation works for reforestation began shortly after. Despite various technical and biological measures, the area is still experiencing negative consequences from mining, exacerbated by its complex glaciotectonic structure. These phenomena have an impact on the post-mining environment. The presente...

The research potential in the field of mobile mapping technologies is often hindered by several constraints. These include the need for costly hardware to collect data, limited access to target sites with specific environmental conditions or the collection of ground truth data for a quantitative evaluation of the developed solutions. To address the...

Mobile GIS allows users who work in the field to acquire, edit, update, store, display and analyse data. It combines modern technologies such as mobile devices (tablet, smartphone), software (applications in Android and iOS), location of a point / place using GNSS transmitter and providing wireless connectivity via the internet. An important step...

The motivation for this study arises from the need to monitor the condition of a rehabilitated post-mining areas even decades after the end of the recovery phase. This can be facilitated with satellite derived spectral vegetation indices and Geographic Information System (GIS) based spatiotemporal analysis. The study area described in this work is...

In Wrocław over the past 20 years, the recorded increase in the average ambient air temperature is approx. 0.5 °C. In addition, urbanisation has created a phenomenon called the Urban Heat Island (UHI). The combined effect of the UHI and climate change can influence groundwater temperature by penetrating underground. The phenomenon of elevated groun...

Mining of minerals impacts all components of the ecosystem and the post-mining environment should be continuously monitored to control the quality and efficiency of reclamation procedures. In the past post-mining areas often did not undergo the full process of reclamation and were left unmonitored. This study was aimed at analysis of surface (gully...

Sublevel caving mining causes surface deformation in three distinct zones parallel to the extracted deposit. Most of the published research is focused on the extent of the caved and fracture zones. The extent of the largest, continuous deformation zone and, thus, the influence of the mine on its surroundings is not yet fully documented. This study...

The vegetation of the post-mining areas is subject to constant and significant changes. Reclamation works, carried out after the cessation of mineral extraction, contribute to the intensive development of new plant species. However, secondary deformations, occurring even many years after the end of exploitation, may cause the degradation of the veg...

Mobile mapping technologies, based on techniques such as simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) and surface-from-motion (SfM), are being vigorously developed both in the scientific community and in industry. They are crucial concepts for automated 3D surveying and autonomous vehicles. For various applications, rotating multiline scanners, man...

1.1 Brief overview of the contribution (main concern , main problem, proposed or chosen solution strategy and results at a glance) • simultaneously solving a problem of mobile robot navigation and metric 3D model construction in un-structured environment, • design of a multipurpose robotic research platform for automating tasks related to explorati...

Citation: Blachowski, J.; Warchala, E.; Koźma, J.; Buczyńska, A.; Bugajska, N.; Becker, M.; Janicki, D.; Kujawa, P.; Kwaśny, L.; Wajs, J.; et al.

Exposure to particulate matter is an important risk factor for mental health disturbances and overall mortality. However, the knowledge on relationship between long-term particulate matter level and suicide rate is limited and requires in-depth study. Population and air pollution data were obtained from the Polish Central Statistics Office and Chie...

Each phenomenon has its cause and effect. During the research on the post-mining processes, the reasons can be found in ongoing processes taking place after the end of the mining exploitation. Therefore, a very important aspect is Geomonitoring. Currently, the post-mining processes taking place all over the world, should be considered into two grou...

Recent developments in space-based surveying methods of the Earths topography, including the differential interferometric synthetic aperture radar (DInSAR), have increased the availability of options for monitoring land subsidence. However, DInSAR methods require expert knowledge and specialized software and they are time-consuming. Here, we demons...

Urban parks have been known to form park cooling islands (PCI), which can effectively alleviate the effect of urban heat islands (UHI) in cities. This paper presents results obtained for four different size parks in the city of Wroclaw, which is located in a temperate continental climate. The number of publications for urban areas located in this t...

Technical and biological treatments, aiming at granting or restoring use/natural values of lands degraded by mining operations, are carried out already at the stage of mining works and continue after the end of exploitation. As a result of these activities, area of plant cover increases and condition of vegetation in the former mineral extraction i...

Understanding the magnitude and distribution of the mixes of the near-ground carbon dioxide (CO2) components spatially (related to the surface characteristics) and temporally (over seasonal timescales) is critical to evaluating present and future climate impacts. Thus, the application of in situ measurement approaches, combined with the spatial int...

The authors would like to make the following corrections about the published paper [...]

Usually, substantial part of a mine haulage system is based on belt conveyors. Reliability of such system is significant in terms of mining operation continuity and profitability. Numerous methods for conveyor belt monitoring have been developed, although many of them require physical presence of the monitoring staff in the dangerous environment. I...

Induced seismicity is one of the negative phenomena caused by anthropogenic activities that include mining of minerals. This phenomenon manifests itself as sudden and unpredictable shocks of rock mass, which can cause surface deformation and damage to ground infrastructure. Until the advent of satellite radar interferometry that enables analysis of...

Nowadays, the problem of ambient air pollution is a challenge in the world. Many government initiatives are being implemented to mitigate the impact of pollution on the environment as well as other aspects of human health and life. A particularly important case is urban areas exposed to the negative impact of industry, for example mining and power...

Induced seismicity by human operations such as mining is usually unpredictable due to the sudden and unexpected character of this phenomenon. The effects of seismic events on the surface, i.e. ground deformation had been difficult to measure with traditional geodetic methods, which are based on discrete point observations and are carried out at tem...

Wrocław is a major city located in the southwestern part of Poland in an aseismic tectonic fault zone. Slow, long-term, vertical isplacements have been observed there from the 1930s based on the levelling network measurements with the use of a precise levelling method. Due to the high cost of classic surveys, these were performed at intervals of se...

The movement of rock raw materials from source to demand areas is carried out predominately with road and railway transport. The latter is less damaging to infrastructure, the environment and society and is cheaper for longer distances, but it is also less flexible and not widely used. The Lower Silesia region in southwestern Poland is an important...

This study aimed to analyze and assess the spatial and temporal trends in distribution of reserves and production of igneous and metamorphic dimension stones and crushed rocks in the Lower Silesia region, which with 90% of total supply is the key source region of these rock raw materials in Poland. The research utilized descriptive statistics to ex...

The phenomenon of induced seismicity is caused by anthropogenic activity such as: underground and opencast mining, extraction of conventional and unconventional hydrocarbons , construction of water reservoirs and production of geothermal energy. In recent years, interest in induced seismicity increased due to the fact that it causes increasingly st...

The issue of monitoring surface motions in post-mining areas in Europe is important due to the fact that a significant number of post-mining areas lie in highly-urbanized and densely-populated regions. Examples can be found in: Belgium, the Czech Republic, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, the United Kingdom, as well as the subject of this s...

This paper presents the results of calculations using the differential satellite radar interferometry (DInSAR) method made for three induced shocks that occurred in the LGOM mining areas. The events selected for the analysis had the magnitudes of 4.8, 4.5 and 3.9 and occurred on the 26.12.2017, 20.07.2018 and 12.08.2018 respectively. To identify po...

The article describes the research on the analysis of the economic use of mining and processing waste produced and stored on the premises of active mining plants exploiting rock raw materials in the context of the reduce-recycle-reuse (3R) concept. To assess the potential economic applications of the investigated wastes, a two-stage methodology bas...

This paper presents the results of calculations using the differential satellite radar interferometry (DInSAR) method made for three induced shocks that occurred in the LGOM mining areas. The events selected for the analysis had the magnitudes of 4.8, 4.5 and 3.9 and occurred on the 26.12.2017, 20.07.2018 and 12.08.2018 respectively. To identify po...

Mining of minerals is associated with waste that needs to be dealt with, e.g., safely deposited or, if possible, reused. From 2010 to 2016, 6,182,277 Mg of waste was deposited during mining of rock raw materials in the Lower Silesia region in Southwest Poland. Extraction activities were responsible for 46.95% of that waste, while mineral processing...

The Lower Silesia area in SW Poland is characterized by a geological structure that is conducive to mining activity. The exploitation of rock raw materials plays an important role in this sector of the economy. By the end of 2017, there were in total approximately 400 current concessions for the exploitation of rock raw materials in the analysed ar...

Extracurricular GIS education, student GIS projects, campus web map, study of campus area quality perception,

Secondary deformations are ground movements occurring in areas of ceased underground mining. These are associated with delayed readjustment of rock mass resulting in subsidence, discontinuous deformations (sinks, cracks, etc.) due to destruction of underground, usually shallow, workings, and elevation of ground surface in response of rock mass to r...

Public participation geographic information system (GIS) and participatory mapping data collection methods are means that enhance capacity in generating, managing, and communicating spatial information in various fields ranging from local planning to environmental management. In this study these methods have been used in two ways. The first one, to...

Geographic information systems (GIS) have been increasingly used in augmenting studies of mining and post-mining areas such as surface deformation analyses, risk assessment associated with old mining sites, identification of old mining sites and other. Up-to-date and complete geodatabase is an indispensable element of any geoinformation system faci...

In terms of method of extracting mineral from deposit, mining can be classified into: surface, underground, and borehole mining. Surface mining is a form of mining, in which the soil and the rock covering the mineral deposits are removed. Types of surface mining include mainly strip and open-cast methods, as well as quarrying. Tasks associated with...

Mining is a complex and staged process that includes: prospecting, documenting, and mine planning, opening up and extraction of mineral (mining, transport, processing and deposition of waste), revitalisation and re-development of former mining area. Mining permit and decision on environmental impact of the enterprise are required prior to commencem...

W artykule, na przykładzie Kopalni Węgla Brunatnego " Turów " , zademonstrowano możliwości wykorzystania satelitarnej interferometrii radarowej w badaniach deformacji powierzchni w odkrywkowym górnictwie węgla brunatnego. Przedstawiono metodykę opracowania danych SAR (ang. Synthetic Aperture Radar) pochodzących z satelity Sentinel-1 Europejskiej Ag...

The paper presents the methodology of planning house development areas and discusses results of works related to identification of the optimum areas for such development, performed using the example of the Wroc³aw Functional Area (WrOF) in Dolnoslaskie Province. For the needs of the analyses of the land suitability for housing development, performe...

The results of research involving the use of PSInSAR and GIS methods to determine surface displacements in a post-mining area have been presented. The studies concern the Walbrzych Coal Basin, a part of the former Lower Silesian Coal Basin (SW Poland) where underground mining of hard coal lasted for several centuries. Difficult geological and tecto...

Mining and subsequent transport of rock minerals may cause environmental and social conflicts. Distribution of documented rock mineral deposits, being a derivative of geology, is usually uneven and inconsistent with demand areas. With the aim to facilitate modelling of potential conflicts and analysing the spatial distribution of source and demand...

The paper focuses on the analysis of vertical movements on old mining terrains in the final stages of mining and in the period after the end of mining. The study has been done for the Walbrzych Coal Basin area in SW Poland, which has been a hard coal mining centre until the mid-90’ties of the 20th Century. The study has been performed in geographic...

Monitoring, mapping and modelling of mining induced terrain deformations are important tasks for quantifying and minimising threats that arise from underground extraction of useful minerals and affect surface infrastructure, human safety, the environment and security of the mining operation itself. The number of methods and techniques used for moni...

Mining of rock minerals, constitutes a strong stimulus for economic development and at the same time, can significantly and negatively affect the state of natural environment, roads and well-being of local communities. This paper presents methodology for studies of spatial impact of rock minerals mining in the Lower Silesia region (SW Poland). In t...

The paper presents a GIS-based method for selecting an optimum location of wind farm on the case study of the Prusice commune in Lower Silesia (SW Poland). The adopted multi-criteria approach utilises the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) and Weighted Linear Combination (WLC) methods to determine weights of sitting criteria (factors and constraints)...

The paper presents the concept of the deformation information system (DIS) to support and facilitate studies of mining-ground deformations. The proposed modular structure of the system includes data collection and data visualisation components, as well as spatial data mining, modelling and classification modules. In addition, the system integrates...

The need to designate functional areas with respect to strategic mineral deposits, and their inclusion in spatial development plans arising from government documents such as the National Spatial Development Concept 2030, requires the development of delimitation criteria for such areas and an associated analysis of the conditions existing within the...

Underground coal mining causes surface changes such as continuous and discontinuous deformations and land use change. The knowledge of the character of these changes in the past and in the present provides information useful for example for spatial development and revitalization of former mining sites. In this paper, a methodology of determining su...

Spatial data mining methods for example those based on artificial neural networks (ANN) allow extraction of information from databases and detection of otherwise hidden patterns occurring in these data and in consequence acquiring new knowledge on the analysed phenomena or processes. One of these techniques is the multivariate statistical analysis,...

A methodology based on spatial analysis functions of geographic information systems (GIS) has been developed to determine continuous ground displacement field from scattered monitoring surveys in mining areas. The method uses the map algebra concept, raster analysis and surface interpolation of discrete points with deterministic and geostatistical...