An Investigation of Learning Needs in the Mining Industry

Mining operations are risky and often dangerous, with a high potential for accidents. Many of these accidents can be prevented by implementing safety measures. It is essential that mining companies take these measures seriously to protect the safety and wellbeing of their workers and ensure the sustainability of the industry. Among these measures, those related to training are addressed in this paper in relation to the ERASMUS+ project entitled DigiRescueMe, which aims at developing courses to increase the knowledge and level of awareness of miners, rescue members, and mining engineers and, consequently, reduce the death rate in mine accidents. For this goal, semi-structured interviews and surveys were implemented, and the collected data were analyzed. The mining industry is a wide domain connected to other sectors like universities, vocational schools, rescue centers, and agencies. For this reason, the investigations carried out herein engaged people from all these sectors to identify firstly the themes, secondly, the topics, and finally the knowledge levels corresponding to those themes and topics in order to determine the learning needs and translate them into requirements for the courses that will be developed during the project activities.