Orange Business Services and De Beers developed the solution on geozoning for security of commands when developing sea diamond fields

2020: Implementation of a pilot project

On September 1, 2020 the international provider of digital services Orange Business Services reported that together with De Beers Marine South Africa, division of the supplier of diamonds De Beers, set and tested the specialized IoT-solution creating geozones for control of a safe distance between workers and the heavy machinery used at extraction of diamonds in the sea. This solution was implemented on the diamond-mining vessel MV Mafuta. It belongs to Debmarine Namibia company and works in 150 km from the coast of Namibia.

Orange Business Services and De Beers developed the solution on geozoning for security of commands when developing sea diamond fields

According to the company, employees in diamond-mining courts are in close proximity to dangerous mechanisms for this reason observance of standards of industrial security are a priority for De Beers. The IoT-solution of Orange is developed just within applied by De Beers by the concept of zero injury rate.

For optimal arrangement of the antennas defining borders of geozones on the vessel, Orange Business Services studied drawings of Mafuta from AutoCAD and conducted examination directly onboard. Wrist sensors were provided to ten crew members. If someone from crew members crossed geozone borders, the sensor fixed it and on the bridge the alarm was given.

De Beers Group Technology SA, R&D division of De Beers Group studies additional opportunities of the developed technology. One of them — connection of sensors on the mining equipment through a management system of SCADA (dispatching control and data collection) and a PLC (programmable logic controllers) to provide auto disconnect of the dangerous equipment in case of violation of a geozone by workers.

The Debmarine Namibia company sets before itself very accurate purpose — to adhere to the concept "zero injury rate" at any of our works. We constantly look for methods to raise the security level of employees, especially concerning the heavy machinery used for extraction of diamonds. Consultation and a joint seminar with the Orange Business Services command allowed to reveal the capacity of Internet of Things for security on board the vessels. We quickly passed to a phase of pilot implementation. Gerhardus Theron managing the vessel MV Mafuta told

The next stage of the project will be directed to improvement of the interface and expansion of opportunities of data collection. This stage provides testing of function of shutdown of the equipment in case of violation of a geozone by the crew member. Keith Matthews, the area manager of Orange Business Services in South Africa said