Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: Tailings dams, critical for storing mine waste and water, must maintain stability and functionality throughout their lifespan. Their design and risk assessment are complicated by significant uncertainties stemming from multivariable parameters, including material properties, loading conditions, and operational decisions. Traditional dam design and risk assessment procedures often rely on first-order probabilistic approaches, which fail to capture the complex, multi-layered nature of these uncertainties fully. This paper reviews the current tailings dam design practice and proposes the application of Bayesian networks (BNs) to analyse the epistemic and aleatory uncertainty inherent in tailings dam design parameters and risk assessment. By representing these uncertainties explicitly, BNs can facilitate more robust and targeted design strategies. The proposed approach involves several key steps, including parameterisation—design input variable probability density function and uncertainty, knowledge elicitation, and model assessment and integration. This methodology provides a sophisticated and comprehensive approach to accounting for the full spectrum of uncertainties, thereby enhancing the reliability of tailings dam designs and risk management decisions.
Source: Geotechnics
Authors: Keith Mandisodza, David John Williams
Institution: The University of Queensland
Language: English
Subfield: Civil and Structural Engineering
Field: Engineering
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: gold
Estimated APC paid: $1,207
Funder: University of Queensland
OpenAlex ID: W4417277899