Developing a Severity Index to account for seismic induced damage in a deep level mine

Most traditionally used rockburst damage scales were developed from Kaiser’s procedure to assess rockburst damage. Kaiser’s damage scales were applied at a South African deep level mine in an attempt to benchmark the severity of rockbursts experienced to other international operations. The inability of the Kaiser damage scales, including other modified and simplified versions, to properly classify the severity of rockbursts experienced at the mine, necessitated the development of a more suitable and alternative severity index. The paper describes the methodology applied to develop a more suitable Severity Index and demonstrates the benefits of the application.