MineSafe is a tool to help miners identify and respond to potentially dangerous issues, Vandrico explained.

The watch enables real-time communication between underground miners and the support team on the surface. Using real-time data and analysis software, mining companies can quickly identify and predict potential hazards, notify employees of dangerous situations, identify worker locations in an emergency, and provide safety guidance to workers in an automated fashion, it said.

Key features include: worker-location tracking; real-time incident reporting; proactive real-time communications; and automatic alerts that use sensors to detect conditions such as gas leaks, smoke or seismic movements.

“Our watch leverages Wi-Fi and sensors in the mine to provide mine workers with greater situational awareness, facilitate communications and accelerate evacuations,” said Lorraine Howell, vice president of R&D for Illumiti.

“Using our worker tracking feature, the mining company can quickly identify the location of each miner in real time from the surface during an emergency, enabling safety teams to quickly locate missing team members. Localised evacuation messages can also be sent based on worker location in the mine.”