Coal Mine Safety Applications of Seismic Monitoring

NOTICE OF INTENT TO ISSUE A PURCHASE ORDER. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), Spokane Research Laboratory (SRL) hereby announces its intent to issue a purchase order to CSIRO to provide Coal Mine Safety Applications of Seismic Monitoring.

BACKGROUND
NIOSH is engaged in a detailed study of ground deformation mechanics at an underground coal mine as part of a mine safety research study to improve mine designs and reduce hazards under deep cover mining conditions. As part of the seismic monitoring component of this research effort, a close-in microseismic monitoring array was deployed by NIOSH at a deep operating longwall coal mine. Data are streamed to a server in real-time and processed to provide microseismic event location coordinates and estimates of event magnitude and other source parameters.
Accuracy of the event locations and other calculated parameters is limited by accuracy of the seismic velocity model. Whereas a uniform constant velocity model is typically found to be adequate for use in monitoring systems deployed in hard rock mines, such a simplified model gives poor, and even misleading, results when applied to the deep coal mining environment. High accuracy event locations are required to achieve the project's research objectives.

This procurement addresses the need to acquire effective methods to characterize complicated velocity structures in coal mines, and to incorporate this information into effective processing strategies and algorithms which are wholly compatible with the existing data processing workflow.

PROJECT OBJECTIVES
The objective is to improve seismic event locations at the NIOSH research site by providing the capability to develop more realistic velocity models that account for the spatial and temporal variation of seismic velocity found in deep longwall coal mine environments.

These objectives can be met by acquiring the capability to frequently update the seismic velocity model through a data inversion scheme that incorporates simultaneous solutions for event locations, seismic velocity model elements and station corrections, and independent velocity measurements from calibration shots, seismic refraction surveys, sonic logs, etc. This new capability is to be integrated with the existing seismic data processing workflow.

SCOPE OF WORK
1. Provide capability to update seismic velocity models using passive seismic sources and other sources of velocity information.

2. Incorporate methods into procedure and code form compatible with existing data processing workflow.

3. Facilitate installation and testing of software on NIOSH computers.

Compatibility Requirements

The newly developed velocity model development and event location capabilities must be fully compatible with the existing NIOSH implementation of the IMS seismic recording and processing system installed at the mine field site and processing facilities in the NIOSH Spokane, WA office.

Procedure and computer code must operate on proprietary IMS data files containing arrival time picks from Jmts software.

Responsible sources that believe they possess the expertise and capabilities identified above are encouraged to submit to the Contracting Officer within 15 days from the posting date of this notice, their written item description/item characteristics and pricing information in the format they choose, not to exceed 10 pages. Please forward the item description and pricing information to Margaret L. Mooney, CDC NIOSH, 626 Cochrans Mill Road, Pittsburgh, PA 15236, Reference 2012-Q-14511. All vendors must be registered in the Central Contractor Registry (CCR) prior to an award of a federal contract. The website is: www.ccr.gov.

The Government will review any/all item descriptions and pricing information submitted and determine if other qualified sources do exist that could provide this requirement. Information received in response will be used solely for the purpose of determining whether to conduct a competitive procurement.

If no affirmative responses are received within 15 days, in accordance with FAR 13.106-1(b)(1), negotiations will be conducted with CSIRO, 1 Technology Court, Pullenvale QLD 4060 Australia as the only source and a purchase order will be issued without any additional notices being posted.