Geodetic Investigation Coal Stockpile Volume Measured from a Mining Site in Okaba, Ankpa L.G.A, Kogi State.
Abstract
Traditional methods of stockpile data acquisition can only go so far, there is need for geodetic surveyors who need to measure accurately large quantity of coal stockpile to utilize modern measuring methodology that is safer, accurate and minimize time consumption. Again, there have been several debates in okaba site on the computation methods that is suitable for determining accurately the volume of a stockpile, hence comes the aims of the project, to investigate two novel surveying technologies that are safer and most convenient to be used in the coal mining site and different volume computation methods that are efficient and yield the best result, using a stockpile site in Ankpa as case study. The objectives are; to establish GCP points using RTK GNSS, to acquire coal stockpile 3D data using GNSS and UAV Drone, to evaluate the accuracy of volume computation using different software and comparing the results of the two datasets. From the results investigated, the UAV measurement produced a volume of 3060.82 m3, the GNSS RTK measurement produced a volume of 2979.92 m3, the difference in percentage between the two measurement is 2.79% which is within the set legitimate error of ±3%. The time spent, costing and risk assessment proves UAV to be better since it’s remotely operated and captured much dataset in lesser time. The triangulated method in PIX4D Mapper is suitable for volume computation since the entire boundary of the stockpile is visible and the surface is relatively flat. Surfer, Global Mapper and AutoCAD Civil 3D results has proven to be consistent when creating both base surface and comparison surface to compute volume of a cone shaped stockpile for the two datasets, the result of TIN volume surface has proven to be the best since it yielded the most consistent result in the methods used by different software, specifically for this type of stockpile shape.
