This report assesses innovative technologies for detecting antipersonnel mines at close range. The Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), concerned about the slow pace of mine detection and clearance in postconflict areas, asked the RAND Science and Technology Policy Institute (S&TPI) to assess the performance potential of innovative mine detection systems and to carry out the followin...

Injury from anti-personnel mines remains a serious threat to military and civilian populations, even after conflict has ceased (Groom 1984; Jeffreys 1996). It was estimated that in 1996, there were approximately 100 million anti-personnel mines laid worldwide and many of these were, and still are, situated in unmarked mine fields. This article discusses the mechanism, medical management and out...

Injury from anti-personnel mines remains a serious threat to military and civilian populations, even after conflict has ceased (Groom 1984; Jeffreys 1996). It was estimated that in 1996, there were approximately 100 million anti-personnel mines laid worldwide and many of these were, and still are, situated in unmarked mine fields. This article discusses the mechanism, medical management and out...

Concern for the human security inside mines is as old as the mining itself. However, ICT (Information and communication technologies), which has impacted human life in so many ways has not been much used for making mines safer. We propose a method that has been practically implemented which can enhance mine safety enormously. It is based on integration of wireless sensor network with an externa...

This paper describes currently developed chemical and thermal landmine neutralization methods under the DoD Humanitarian Demining Research and Development (HD R&D) Program. It includes a table showing the differences among current detonation or demolition techniques, and among chemical and thermal systems. Comparative elements include the neutralization mechanism; neutralization effects; time r...

Soils can be disturbed by the burial of mines. When disturbed, the soils have a smaller effective size distribution than when undisturbed and this difference can be detected optically. Apparent emissivity differences in the thermal infrared is an effective passive optical technique developed by others for discriminating disturbed silicate soils from undisturbed soils and appears particularly se...

The Altai-Sayan mining region located east of Novosibirsk, Russia, comprises over 72 mines which are located between 7 and 559 km from the International Monitoring System (IMS) primary 3-component station ZAL. We have origin time and location estimates of 853 blasts that have occurred in this trend between 1/1/1995 and 6/30/2000. The mines are known to use millisecond delay-fire blasting and ha...

A computational efficient approach to identify very small mine-shaped plactic objects, e.g. M56 AntiPersonnel (AP) mines buried in the ground, is presented. The size of the objects equals the smallest AP-mines in use today, i.e., the most difficult mines to detect with respect to humanitarian mine clearance. Our approach consists of three stages, the phase stepped-fiequency radar method, genera...

In Cobol, procedures can be programmed in ways that lead to unexpected behaviour and reduced portability. This behaviour is recognized as so-called ‘mines’: programming practices containing hidden dangers and requiring extreme caution. Cobol mines can be created intentionally or by a programming error, and can be tripped at an unforeseen moment. This leads to minefields in source code with unse...

Acid mine drainage (AMD) is the outflow of acidic water from metal mines or coal mines. When exposed to air and water, metal sulfides from the deposits of the mines are oxidized and produce acid, metal ions and sulfate, which lower the pH value of the water. An open limestone channel (OLC) is a passive and low cost way to neutralize AMD. A mathematical model has been created to numerically dete...