In general, the goal of tailings closure is to establish a stable feature that provides end or returning land use value without adding unnecessary burden. This is reliant on a comprehensive and robust understanding of the facility, site conditions and clear closure goals.

All tailings facilities have uncertainties in design assumptions, site conditions, operating conditions and how the facility will respond to changing conditions. A focus of tailings facility development and operations is managing the potential impacts of these uncertainties on performance as well as reducing them over time.

The nature of progressively raising and loading a tailings facility over time, often decades,
provides a tremendous opportunity to improve your understanding of the site. A performance-based approach to facility management is a structured framework for designers and operators to learn and refine their understanding of the site over time by comparing measured and expected behaviour. This reduce uncertainties to levels much lower than what can be achieved from a typical prescriptive based design approach.

This keynote will highlight the key concepts of a performance-based approach, supported by examples, and how it can be used to support tailings facility closure through increased understanding of the site and reduced uncertainties.