Water inrush conceptual site models for coal mines of China

Water disasters occur during coal mine construction and production in China and account for many of the nation’s mine disasters and casualties. Although China has made major strides in preventing these major water inrush disasters during the last decades, most coal mines have not developed representative conceptual site models (CSMs) for water inrushes. A CSM describes complete, potentially complete, or incomplete pathways from the sources to various receptors including the mining area and the neighboring ecological environment. While the general components of water inrush CSMs are presented for six different regions of China, the CSM has to be tailored to each specific mine and specific mining area. The pathway analysis solely focused on the CSM approach helps to better understand water inrush mechanisms and perform water inrush risk assessment and identify data gaps for further investigations. It also promotes the integration of water hazard control and ecological environment risk reduction and drives proactive engineering measures for water inrush prevention and mine water control to eliminate or reduce water inrush hazards and ecological deterioration risks.