GRID-Arendal Workshop
Marketing
On 16 December members of our Extractive Industries team visited Norway to attend a workshop at the GRID-Arendal office. We were there to continue our work in collaboration with GRID and the Church of England to develop cost-effective methods for monitoring tailings dams that enable governments to assess the stability of these structures, especially in the wake of the Brumadinho disaster in Brazil.
“There is a clear need for cost-effective monitoring of tailings dams, both operational and abandoned, to help us understand the risks they pose. This is particularly true where the potential consequences are high, even if they are in remote and hard-to-access locations. We will be using the latest satellite technologies to generate up to date independent information on tailings storage facilities. We are delighted to be supporting this unique initiative by bringing our expertise to this vital issue.” – Stuart Martin, CEO, Satellite Applications Catapult
During the workshop delegates were shown a demo of the database platform GRID has been developing, including the platform functionalities and front-end development.
Our team presented the strategy for the next stages of the project, primarily the requirements gathering within the investor community – work is going to take place between January and February 2020. The Catapult will conduct a series of interviews with a range of investors to gather feedback for the development of the Global Tailings Dams Portal. The aim of these interviews is to ensure the Portal provides the most relevant information in the right format to inform investors about tailings dams management of their investee companies.
Technical discussion then took place between our technical architect and the development team at GRID to ensure integration between the two technical workstreams.
