Open pit mining of rock minerals and the affected areas requiring further development are a serious challenge for shaping the positive image of the mining industry among the public. The direction and method of post-mining land reclamation are important for this image, which should take into account various factors describing the mining area, including social preferences. The article presents an example solution – fuzzy system (FSDR) – which supports the selection of the direction of reclamation of post-mining areas created after the termination of operations of open pit gravel and sand natural aggregate mines. The article presents selected factors determining the selection of the direction and possible reclamation variants as input and output data of the fuzzy system. The rules base of the developed system, as well as the mechanisms of inference and defuzzification, were also characterized. The application of the developed system is presented on selected examples.

The article presents subject matter related to the assessment of the suitability of the built-up area, including the occurrence of sinkholes on the surface. The investment plot, which is the subject of the analysis, is located in the central part of the Upper Silesian Coal Basin, where shallow exploitation of coal seams was conducted in the past. At present it is a post-mining area, located at a large distance from active mines. It has an attractive administrative location and good transport connection with the main road connecting the cities of the Silesian agglomeration. These advantages make it particularly attractive in terms of use for various types of investments. The geological and mining factors are not favorable in the area in question, mainly due to the shallow mining exploitation conducted in the past and the access excavations on small depth and an unknown method of liquidation. These reasons are the cause of some restrictions in the use of construction, for which taking the appropriate solutions is recommended. According to the study of (Rules... 2009), the category of mining land should be defined for the areas of liquidated mining plants due to the limitation in construction use. The authors of the article made an attempt to determine it, and they analyzed the geological and mining conditions for this purpose, mainly including mining exploitation conducted in the past. On the basis of the obtained results and own experience, the type of expected hazards and its assessment were determined The probability of the occurrence of the inclusions according to the Chudek-Olaszowski method (Chudek et al. 1988) was assumed as a measure of the hazard.

The post-mining areas due to the difficulties of those, often associated with expensive activities, usually take the form of wasteland. In contrast, unavailable, unused and alien areas the mentality of residents, are identified with empty space. The purpose of the authors was to answer the question: Are post-mining areas becoming empty spaces? Her research basis was changes in the functioning of post-mining areas and empty spaces in Katowice – a city with a long-standing mining tradition. Using GIS tools, a spatial analysis was carried out to determine the empty spaces functions and the perceiving of the post-mining areas by residents or users of a given district nearby.

Post-industrial areas are an area of concentration, penetration and shaping the economic, social and environmental zone. The strategic goal of transforming post-industrial areas should be to obtain a new, dynamic and favorable state of equilibrium for a given area, as well as its surroundings after cessation of operations. The purpose of the article is to indicate the possibility of adaptation of post-industrial areas, especially after exploitation of the mineral, to perform new functions. The direction and the purpose of the recultivation and planning actions to a large extent may be influenced by specific social and economic conditions affecting the competitiveness of each and individually treated fragment of space.

The rim of a post-exploitation basin is a particularly dangerous zone for buildings. This is due to the impact of mining on the nearby buildings, which persists even after exploitation activities are finished. The rim of the basin remains constantly deformed. This paper presents numerical analyses of buildings located in Marklowice (Silesian Voivodeship, Poland). They are located in an area that was exploited for mining, above the initial exploitation edge on the rim of the basin. The area of the analysed buildings was geodetically monitored during mining works. The results of the measurements allowed the observation of changes in terrain deformation indicators, together with the determination of the settlement’s final values after the operation was completed. Knowledge of the results enabled the preparation of numerical analyses of buildings with the use of the finite element method (FEM), the purpose of which was to determine the residual stresses in the structures after the end of the exploitation. The results are presented in the form of stress maps, which show changes in the internal forces in buildings left by mining operations. Specific examples are used. Two residential two-storey buildings were analysed; they were built using traditional brick methods, with a single-storey outbuilding. All of the analysed buildings are located in the mining commencement zone, in which the deformation of the surface has not faded away.

The theory of Professor Stanislaw Knothe, known as Knothe’s Theory, has been the foundation for practical predictive calculations of the impacts of exploitation for many years. It has enabled the large-scale extraction of coal, salt and metal ores located in the protective pillars of cities and prime surface structures. Knothe’s Theory has been successfully applied in Polish and global mining for over seventy years, making it one of the most well-known and recognized achievements in Polish mining science. Knothe’s Theory provides a temporal-spatial description of subsidence that relies on four essential parameters: the vertical scale parameter a, the horizontal displacement parameter λ, the horizontal range scale parameter cotβ and the time scale parameter c.
This article characterizes the parameters of Knothe’s Theory used in various current applications for calculating subsidence, surface and rock uplift, and other applications of the theory, even beyond its classical form. The presented solutions are based on a mathematical model of the interaction of a complex element and cover topics such as subsidence during full exploitation with roof collapse and full exploitation with backfilling, pillar-room mining, the effect of salt caverns on the surface and salt rock, and fluid deposits and surface uplift caused by changes in the water level within closed coal mines. The article also discusses the evolution of the range angle of the main influences and presents Knothe’s solutions related to time, describing the horizontal displacement parameter λ.

The article presents three German-located case studies based on stochastic methods founded by the theory proposed by Knothe and the development of the ‘Ruhrkohle method’ according to Ehrhardt and Sauer. These solutions are successfully applied to predict mining-induced ground movements. The possibility of forecasting both vertical and horizontal ground movements has been presented in the manuscript, which allowed for optimization mining projects in terms of predicted ground movements.
The first example presents the extraction of the Mausegatt seam beneath the district of Moers-Kapellen in the Niederberg mine. Considering, among others, the adaption of the dynamic impact of the underground operations to the mining-induced sensitivity of surface objects, the maximum permissible rate of the face advance has been determined.
The second example presents the extraction of coal panel 479 in the Johann seam located directly in the fissure zone of Recklinghausen-North. Also, in this case, the protection of motorway bridge structure (BAB A43/L225) to mining influences has been presented. The Ruhrkohle method was used as a basis for the mathematical model that was developed to calculate the maximum horizontal opening of the fissure zone and the maximum gap development rate.
Part of the article is dedicated to ground uplift due to rising mine water levels. Although it is not the main factor causing mining-related damage, such movements in the rock masses should also be predicted. As the example of the Königsborn mine, liquidated by flooding, shows stochastic processes are well suited for predicting ground uplift. The only condition is the introduction of minor adjustments in the model and the use of appropriate parameters.

The shortage of investment areas may be at least partially satisfied by the development of reclaimed post-mining areas. These are often subsidence zones levelled with hard coal mine waste or reclaimed sub-level old dumps of this waste. From the geotechnical point of view, such grounds represent anthropogenic grounds containing mine waste, and they are considered as possessing unfavourable properties in terms of the foundation of building structures. The paper initially presents the analysis of the properties of waste from the hard coal mining industry, emphasising that they expose several beneficial properties enabling their safe use. The second part of the article is devoted to the determination of soil density using the DPSH probe. It has been found that the applicable standards lack complex relationships that would allow for a reliable interpretation of the measurement results in a wide range of soil types. The last part presents exemplary results of measurements made with the DPSH probe at a construction site. The obtained results allowed for the formulation of several conclusions regarding the possibility of building on a ground made of hard coal waste and the use of dynamic sounding to assess the geotechnical properties of such anthropogenic soil.

Post-mining dumps are a common sight in the industrial areas of Silesia (Poland). Despite several reclamation projects, many of them still constitute an unresolved problem. It is not only a matter of unaesthetic view – they often pose a threat to the environment and the people living nearby. Despite revitalization, some dumps are not properly maintained and are at the risk of slope failure. Such places require constant geodetic observation and stability control. In this article, the example of a dump located in the city of Gliwice was used to show the possibilities offered by the use of photogrammetry and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) for cyclic checks of the embankment condition. The current state of the dump and the results of interventions after two incidents of slope failure,were observed. The main slopes of the terrain surface and at the selected cross-sections were determined in two flight missions. The obtained geometrical data were used in the further numerical analysis. Finite Element Method model representing one of the escarpment cross-sectionswas built to estimate the factor of safety and determine the main mechanisms responsible for the failure. Elastic-perfectly plastic Coulomb-Mohr model was used to describe the behaviour of the minestone and the ‘ c – tan φ reduction’ – for calculation of the stability. The problem of reliable material properties’ estimation was emphasized. The analysis included the impact of seepage and total head difference on the slope stability. It was concluded that the rainfall intensity had a decisive influence on the instability of the dump.