Improvements in Case History Knowledge for Tailings Dam Failures by Statistical and Remote Sensing Methods (CanBreach Project)

Conducting a tailings dam breach assessment (TDBA) is an important step in emergency preparedness and response planning. Following the occurrences of high-profile failure incidents, a multi-institution research project, called CanBreach, was started in 2019 to improve the state-of-the-art in TDBA practice. The University of Waterloo, through a four-year doctoral program, led the detailed statistical and remote sensing (i.e., satellite-based GIS and InSAR) components of the CanBreach project, with the central goal of enhancing case history knowledge. There were three main objectives in this doctoral program: 1. Understand the background hazard-risk: estimate the number of tailings dams to quantify the historical failure rate, in comparison to water-retention dams for context. 2. Map the consequences: geospatial analysis of archived satellite imagery and compilation of case history data to develop new empirical relations for tailings dam failures. 3. Evaluate modern solutions: application of Sentinel-1 InSAR technology, including multiple processing algorithms, to a ground-truth test site for comparison to monitoring prism data, and to several forensic case study sites to check if failures could have been predicted in advance. The purpose of this paper is to summarize the main contributions resulting from this doctoral program. The outcomes included: 1) a representative estimate of the number of tailings dams worldwide; 2) new insights into magnitude-frequency and failure statistics; 3) new case history databases of tailings dam failures and tailings flows supplemented with satellite images; and 4) a better understanding of the capabilities and limitations of Sentinel-1 InSAR for monitoring tailings dams. These contributions have implications for the hazard and risk assessment of tailings dams.Science, Faculty ofEarth, Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences, Department ofNon UBCUnreviewedGraduateFacultyOthe