Inventory of Locations of Old Mining Works Using LiDAR Data: A Case Study in Slovakia

The concept of further sustainable development in the area of administration of the register of old mining works and recent mining works in Slovakia requires precise determination of the locations of the objects that constitute it. The objects in this register have their uniqueness linked with the history of mining in Slovakia. The state of positional accuracy in the registration of objects in its current form is unsatisfactory. Different database sources containing the locations of the old mining works are insufficient and show significant locational deviations. For this reason, it is necessary to precisely locate old mining works using modern measuring technologies. The most effective approach to solving this problem is the use of LiDAR data, which at the same time allow determining the position and above-ground shape of old mining works. Two localities with significant mining history were selected for this case study. Positional deviations in the location of old mining works among the selected data were determined from the register of old mining works in Slovakia, global navigation satellite system (GNSS) measurements, multidirectional hill-shading using LiDAR, and accessible data from the open street map. To compare the positions of identical old mining works from the selected database sources, we established differences in the coordinates (ΔX, ΔY) and calculated the positional deviations of the same objects. The average positional deviation in the total count of nineteen objects comparing documents, LiDAR data, and the register was 33.6 m. Comparing the locations of twelve old mining works between the LiDAR data and the open street map, the average positional deviation was 16.3 m. Between the data sources from GNSS and the registry of old mining works, the average positional deviation of four selected objects was 39.17 m.