Forecasting Parameters of Earth Surface Subsidence to Assess Safe Operation of Engineering Structures

Mining activities, particularly at shallow depths, create heavy environmental impact that causes irreversible changes in the environment’s properties, structure and so on. Such unnatural interference frequently makes the environment unusable to an extent in future. It is known that exhaustion of stratified deposits causes notable subsidence of earth surface that may destroy structures, and interrupt the mode of water flows both on surface and underground. To describe the parameters of earth surface subsidence trough under the impact of underground mining of stratified deposits, this paper uses a three-parameter function expressed with the Gauss probability integral. We also propose a numerical algorithm to find the function’s parameters based on the values of vertical shift of reference points, measured in situ with benchmark stations. The algorithm is based on the least-squares method, while the minimum value of the respective functionality discrepancies are found with random search. Analysis of the specifics of the function proper helped to propose an approximated method to find its parameters. The paper compares approximating curves produced by both methods, with field measurements.