As El Niño risk rises, mining needs to close the gap between warning and action

The World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) has highlighted the increasing likelihood of heatwaves, droughts, heavy rainfall, and other extreme weather events as El Niño develops, while emphasising the importance of preparedness and informed decision-making.

The potential economic consequences are also significant: the African Development Bank (AfDB) estimates that a Super El Niño could result in a US$10 billion to US$20 billion hit across African countries, with impacts extending to food and water security, infrastructure, and economic activity. For mining companies, El Niño can concentrate the hydroclimatic risks, from too much water, to too little, as well as water-quality challenges. Often at the same operation, within the same season.

Extreme rainfall can disrupt operations, while water scarcity can affect processing and environmental teams may have to manage deteriorating water quality. The challenge is not simply knowing that extreme weather risk is increasing. It is having enough reliable, site-level information to turn an early warning into an operational response, and knowing that the mitigation measures put in place to protect people and infrastructure will work.

According to Insight Terra CEO Alastair Bovim, this is where continuous monitoring can play a critical role in building operational resilience and ensuring an approach that is holistic and works across the entire operation and organisation.

“Companies need to be asking themselves the hard questions ahead of time: how will we respond if extreme weather hits, what information will we need to make that decision, and can we trust that information when we need it most?

“You start with monitoring, you understand the probability of an event, and then you use that information to manage the risk and decide what action is needed,” explains Bovim.

That sequence describes a chain now common across climate adaptation technology: sensing what is happening on the ground, understanding it as quantified risk, and acting on decisions committed to in advance. Resilience depends on all three layers working together.

From seasonal forecasts to site-level decisions

Seasonal forecasts provide an important indication of the conditions an operation may face over the coming months. But they cannot tell an individual mine exactly what is happening at its site, or what action may be required in the next few hours. This distinction becomes particularly important during extreme rainfall events, where conditions can change quickly and the consequences can be highly localised.

A mine may have invested in stormwater channels, drainage infrastructure or other measures to manage heavy rainfall. But those measures also need to be monitored and tested to ensure they continue to perform as intended. Bovim says this is an often-overlooked part of operational resilience.

“After you put mitigations in place you need to test, evaluate, and monitor them to make sure they will perform when a disaster occurs,” he says.

This can mean moving beyond periodic inspections and annual assessments towards more frequent monitoring of the infrastructure itself. Monitoring efforts should also increase as the risk rises, particularly during an adverse weather event. For mining, this is becoming non-discretionary.

Standards such as the Global Industry Standard on Tailings Management, the repricing of insurance for water-exposed assets, and the direct exposure of infrastructure and balance sheets mean the ability to measure and evidence water-driven risk is increasingly a condition of operating.

“The value of digital technology is that you can run daily simulations using a digital twin to hypothesise how your facility might fare and take proactive steps to mitigate the impact,” says Bovim.

Turning a warning into action

The value of more frequent, localised information becomes even clearer when a severe weather event is approaching.

Insight Terra is applying machine-learning-based nowcasting models to provide probabilities of extreme rainfall over the next several hours at a scale relevant to an individual facility.

Combined with site monitoring, this can give operators a more detailed picture of what may be about to happen and the opportunity to activate measures that have already been planned. The technology does not prevent the weather event. Instead, it can help shorten the time between recognising a potential threat and taking action.

That distinction is important, says Bovim, because resilience is ultimately about what an organisation does with a warning.

He recalls an incident early in his career while working on a dam in Dubai. He was underground carrying out inspections when he was suddenly told to evacuate: heavy rain had fallen 30 km away and a flood was on its way. He made it to the top of the dam wall just before a surge of water swept through, washing away machinery and equipment.

Had the warning not reached him in time, he says, “I would have been dead.”

Preparing for what the data tells you

Monitoring alone, however, is not enough. Organisations also need to decide in advance what they will do when conditions change and test those responses regularly. For a mine, this could mean defining the rainfall or water conditions that trigger a particular response, ensuring the relevant people receive the warning, and checking that physical measures such as drainage and diversion infrastructure remain clear and functional.

The same applies beyond mining, whether managing water resources, protecting crops or keeping critical infrastructure operational. Water, in this sense, is best treated as a risk variable that cuts across sectors rather than a sector in its own right. Trusted, site-level data can help organisations respond faster when extreme weather hits.

Digital twin models can also help operators rehearse different scenarios before an event occurs, providing a way to assess how infrastructure may respond under changing conditions. This creates a chain from forecast to monitoring, monitoring to warning, and warning to action. The broader lesson, says Bovim, is that organisations should not think about climate resilience solely in terms of predicting what the weather will do.

“The forecasts are important, but the question is, what are you doing about it?” he says.

As extreme weather becomes a more significant operational consideration, the organisations best placed to absorb the impact will be those that can move quickly from understanding the risk to understanding what is happening on the ground, acting on information they can trust.

Read the article online at: https://www.globalminingreview.com/mining/24082026/as-el-nio-risk-rises-mining-needs-to-close-the-gap-between-warning-and-action/