Arabian Journal of Geosciences (2020) 13:852

https://doi.org/10.1007/s12517-020-05833-6

GMGDA 2019

The prediction of water conducted zone in coal mining by Internet

of things perception
Zhenguo Yan 1 & Xintan Chang 1 & Yanping Wang 1

Received: 15 May 2020 / Accepted: 12 August 2020

# Saudi Society for Geosciences 2020

Abstract
To ensure that water resources are not damaged during coal mining, the height of the water conducted zone in coal mining is
explored in this study. When mining coal mines, the height of the water conducted zone is complex and unstable when making
predictions. Therefore, the Internet of things perception technology is applied to solve the problem of inaccurate data collection.
Moreover, the multiple regression analytical method is introduced to obtain the prediction equation for the height of the water
conducted zone. The research results show as follows: by using the Internet of things sensing technology, when collecting data,
the redundant and error data can be excluded before the data fusion, which can improve the validity of the data. The multiple
regression analysis methods are used to summarize and conclude the data by using the linear regression method; therefore, the
obtained prediction equation can accurately predict the height of the water conducted zone, which solves the problem caused by
using traditional empirical equations in coal mining in the past that leads to a large error in the prediction height. By using the
Internet of things perception technology to predict the height of the water conducted zone in coal mining, the collected data are
more accurate and the prediction results are more effective. Therefore, this method can effectively protect water resources during
coal mining.

Keywords Water conducted zone . Perception technology . Multiple regression method . Linear regression

Introduction Research on the development law and height of the water

During coal mining, the overlying strata on the coal seam will
also be affected, and the phenomenon of movement and dam-
age will occur, resulting in deformation. The degree of these
damages can be divided into fall zones, fissure zones, and
curved sinking zones, in which the falling and fissure zones
are called water conducted zones. Because the water conduct-
ed zone is at the lowest level, the development of the water
conducted zone and the prediction of its height can be used to
predict the amount of water in the mine and the retention plan
of the safety coal pillars. In addition, it can also predict the
safety of mining work under high water content coal seams.
This article is part of the Topical Collection on Geological Modeling and
Geospatial Data Analysis
* Zhenguo Yan
zhenguoyan666@126.com
1
College of Safety Science and Engineering, Xi’an University of
Science and Technology, Xi’an 710054, Shaanxi, China
conducted zone is a prerequisite to ensure the safety of coal
mining operations (Liu et al. 2017a). Scholars worldwide have
studied the development law and height of the water conduct-
ed zone; in the meantime, studies in this area started earlier in
foreign countries of China. Globally, scholars have put for-
ward the “arch theory,” “cantilever theory,” “zone division
theory,” and “natural slope theory.” These theories are all
the results of research on the development of water conducted
zone height (Yang and Lv 2017). Some other scholars have
put forward a summary of the prediction methods for coal
mining subsidence. In the twentieth century, the British
Mining Bureau also covered the overburden composition,
coal seam thickness, and mining methods during coal mining
under the sea in the relevant requirements (Wang et al. 2018).
In China, scholars have combined the mining thickness of coal
seams and the strength types of rock masses in the early days
and obtained the relationship between coal seam thickness,
crack height, and different rock mass conditions (Wang et al.
2017a). In the 1980s, Chinese scholars proposed the concept
of water conducted zone and caused domestic scholars to
study it. At the same time, the scholar also proposed related
 852 Page 2 of 6
equations to calculate its height (Beneš 2016). In recent years,
scientists in China have done a lot of research on the proper-
ties of rock masses and the development law of water con-
ducted zones.
With the continuous progress of society and the continuous
development of science and technology, the Internet of things
(IoT) has also quickly attracted widespread attention from
scholars worldwide, and many scholars have studied it.
American scholars have combined radio frequency identifica-
tion (RFID) technology with the Internet to give the IoT the
function of identification and management (Wang and Meng
2018). Furthermore, scholars have conducted in-depth re-
search on this method so that the IoT has the functions of
object identification, tracking, and monitoring, making it ca-
pable of management work. Later, scholars have redefined the
IoT, emphasized the characteristics of the IoT, and proposed
that the IoT has intelligent functions (Wang et al. 2017b).
Chinese scholars define the IoT as a type of sensor and sensor
network to perceive complex information to get the informa-
tion that people want (Słota et al. 2016). The IoT technology
has also been promoted to the coal industry. However, this
technology is only used as a safety monitoring work and part
of the high-level data prediction work in coal mine operations,
while the application is not ideal. Usually, in China, the inte-
gration between the systems is ignored, which leads to their
inability to cooperate well, and the data cannot be effectively
calculated and applied during work.
According to the existing research, this study conducted in-
depth research on the development law and height of the water
conducted zone. The IoT perception technology is used to
collect data from coal mining, which is more accurate and
effective for the height prediction of the water conducted
zone. In addition, the linear prediction method in multiple
regression is used to derive the height prediction equation of
the water conducted zone.
Methods
Application of the IoT technology in the prediction of
water conducted zone
IoT is a combination of various information sensing devices
with the Internet and other technologies to form a huge net-
work. Its purpose is to combine sensors with the Internet to
identify and manage objects connected to the network. This
technology is virtual and implements the connection between
people and things (Lu et al. 2017). IoT technology can per-
form real-time monitoring of various links in coal mining and
obtain huge engineering information data. It can comprehen-
sively manage strict coal mining construction and have a de-
tailed understanding of the mining area. However, at the same
time, IoT technology relies on massive amounts of
Arab J Geosci (2020) 13:852
information and data. The relationship between these data is
intricate and difficult to be directly used; therefore, it is nec-
essary to organize these data. The perceptual information fu-
sion technology is one of the core technologies of IoT tech-
nology. It can integrate and process the IoT data in various
aspects and between different levels, and filter out and extract
useful information from it. The method of acquiring data by a
single sensor is more accurate; at the same time, the relation-
ship between the data can be better obtained, and the advan-
tage of complementary information is achieved (Mathapelo
et al. 2016).
Perception information fusion technology
Information fusion technology is the process of data fusion.
The data collected in a single sensor is used by various de-
vices. Computing technology analyzes information under cer-
tain rules, comprehensively processes it, and obtains the re-
quired information. In the process of information acquisition,
this technology can continuously repair itself to make the final
obtained result more perfect and accurate (Duan et al. 2018).
Because the sensors in the system work independently when a
single sensor is damaged and cannot continue to work, it can-
not affect the work of other sensors; therefore, the network has
a stable working performance; second, because the sensors in
the system are not unique, it is necessary to use geometric
methods to form their conductive aperture when working so
that the spatial resolution of the information and data fusion is
effectively improved; the process of data fusion can avoid the
influence of inaccurate information obtained by data errors
and improve the accuracy of the information; meanwhile, be-
cause the data fusion is performed in the case of multiple
sensors, the acquired information is better than that obtained
by a single sensor. The information obtained is more compre-
hensive, preventing excessive errors of information data (Gao
et al. 2015). Data fusion is to pick out the data that users are
interested in and send it to users. Therefore, these data flows
need to be managed. The management process is shown in
Fig. 1.
The fusion of multi-sensor information data is a kind of
comprehensive analysis and processing based on certain
criteria; finally, it obtains valuable data. Considering informa-
tion as abstract data, information fusion can be divided into
three levels, i.e., the pixel-level fusion, feature-level fusion,
and decision-level fusion. The pixel-level fusion is the
lowest-level fusion, and the decision-level fusion is the
highest-level fusion process.
Application of perception information fusion in
height prediction of water conducted zone
When mining coal, the geological conditions and the working
environment are complex and changeable, which brings a lot
Arab J Geosci (2020) 13:852 Page 3 of 6 852

Sensor 1 Sensor 2 Sensor 3 Sensor n Gross error is a data error caused by unnecessary failures of
equipment. At present, there are mainly three methods for
eliminating error data, i.e., periodic method, Wright criterion
or Grubbs rule, and algorithms (Yan et al. 2016). Due to the
complex and diverse working environment of coal mining,
Storage normal load distribution cannot be achieved. The first two
methods cannot achieve the ideal result of eliminating errors.
Data
Sensor side
convergence
Furthermore, this study chooses to use algorithms to eliminate
storage errors. The algorithm selected in this study is the Kalman filter
point end storage
algorithm, which can be used in the calculation of various
linear, discrete, or finite-dimensional space systems. The
Kalman filter algorithm is to use the equations to estimate
the linear minimum variance of the probability density in the
Query
continuous updating process under the calculation state
Data (Arthur et al. 2016). This algorithm is to set the initial data
Sensor side
storage
convergence of the height of water conducted zone as the initial optimal
point end storage data. Then, it calculates the covariance at that moment. The
same calculation method is used to obtain the covariance at
the next state, and the two covariance variance data are opti-
mally compared. Therefore, the covariance data are continu-
Result
ously updated to obtain the optimal covariance data corre-
Fig. 1 Flowchart of data management sponding to the water conducted zone, which is output as
the result.
of inconvenience to the mining work. There is a great possi-
bility to cause pollution and damage to water resources when Data-level fusion
carrying out coal mining work. Therefore, the correct predic-
tion of the height and development law of the water conducted After preprocessing the measured data, it is necessary to per-
zone is very important to prevent and control water loss. The form data fusion. In this study, the Bayesian network algo-
factors affecting the high development of the water conducted rithm is selected to fuse the obtained complex data. The
zone are diverse; therefore, the data collection must be as Bayesian network algorithm is an algorithm that uses mathe-
comprehensive and accurate as possible. Then, the informa- matical probability networks. It infers a graphical network
tion fusion of the collected data is performed. The information based on an overview and processes and analyzes variable
fusion process is shown in Fig. 2. information data to obtain the size of the probability informa-
When predicting the height of the water conducted zone, tion. The calculation process of this method is shown in Fig. 3.
the collected data needs to be preprocessed, and the redundant
and error data in the information data should be processed and Application of multiple linear regression analysis
eliminated. methods in prediction of water conducted zone

Data preprocessing After processing and analyzing the data obtained through the
IoT technology, it is necessary to calculate the processed data
In the process of data preprocessing, the error data in the data and use multivariate linear regression analysis to derive the
are mainly eliminated, which are mainly the gross errors. equation for predicting the highly developed water conducted

Fig. 2 Flowchart of data fusion

Geographic
Decision
information Data fusion
perception
system
Sensor node

Factor Internet of Data

Remote acquisition Things Road preprocessing
sensing
instrument
 852 Page 4 of 6
Fig. 3 Process of Bayesian
network algorithm Sensor 1
Kalman filter
zone. The multiple linear regression analysis methods are
based on mathematics. It collects the mathematical relation-
ships between the data, finds a regular change calculation
method of the independent variables that affect the changes,
and finally obtains expected results. Many factors affect the
height development of the water conducted zone. However,
based on the existing research results, this study mainly selects
several factors, such as coal seam mining height, mining
depth, lithological proportion coefficient, and a working
length of the working interface, to explore their relationship
between the heights of water conducted zone (Liu et al.
2017b). These data are then analyzed and processed by com-
puter software to obtain the relationship between them and the
water conducted zone. The calculation equation of the multi-
ple linear regression algorithm is shown below.
y ¼ β 0 þ β 1 x1 þ ⋯ þ β n x n ð1Þ
where the value of β is a variable, which is the dependent
variable of the observed value and also the coefficient required
this time. It is solved by the method of least squares.
 2
f ðxi Þ ¼ ∑ yi −byi ¼ ∑ðyi −β 0 −β 1 x1i −⋯−β n −xni Þ2 ¼ min ð2Þ
Results and analysis
Application of perception information fusion
technology in the prediction of height development
of water conducted zone
This method is used to eliminate the gross error of the data
obtained by the sensor during preprocessing. The coal mining
condition is monitored for a period of 100 min in the
Arab J Geosci (2020) 13:852
Sensor 2 Sensor n
Kalman filter Kalman filter
Combined Bayesian formula
Data fusion
Result
temperature range of 22–25 °C, and the information data col-
lected by the sensor is processed by the Kalman filter algo-
rithm. Then, the preprocessed data is subjected to information
fusion, and the uncertain information in the obtained data can
be processed. The Bayesian algorithm uses the probability
inference method as the basis for information fusion. The data
can be highly fused in the prediction of the height of the water
conducted zone in coal mining to obtain more accurate results.
Using sensors to monitor the status of coal mining in real-time
can comprehensively understand the status of the mine, which
eliminates the need for the staff to go down to make measure-
ments and saves a lot of time and energy for the staff.
Application of multiple regression analysis methods
in the prediction of height development of water
conducted zone
The mining height, mining depth, rock mass proportionality
factor, and working length of the four factors are mainly se-
lected to determine the influence of the height development of
the water conducted zone. First, the relationship between the
height development of the water conducted zone and the min-
ing height is tested. The relationship between the water con-
ducted zone and the height before mining is tested in a range
of coal mining heights within 8 m. It is found that the mining
height began to change after 2 m and showed irregular chang-
es. However, from the perspective of the overall distribution,
the overall trend is rising. When the mining height is 7 to 8 m,
the height development of the water conducted zone ap-
proaches 100 m. The height development trend of water con-
ducted zone within the range of lithological scale coefficient
of 1 is calculated. It is found that the overall trend is that the
height of the water conducted zone increases with the increase
of the lithological scale factor. The height of the water
Arab J Geosci (2020) 13:852
conducted zone varies greatly within the range of 0.4 to 0.6,
and the height development of the water conducted zone
shares the relationship with the oblique length and mining
depth, both of which change with the mining depth. The rela-
tionship between the height development of the water con-
ducted zone and the mining depth is shown in Fig. 4.
As shown in Fig. 4, the height development of the water
conducted zone will change non-linearly with the increase of
the mining depth of the coal mine. The height of the water
conducted zone also reaches the highest when the mining
depth is 430 m.
In addition, the propulsion speed also has a certain
effect on the height development of the water conducted
zone. However, because the propulsion speed is relatively
long, it is not involved in this study. Multivariate regres-
sion analysis is performed on the relationship between the
above influencing factors and the water conducted zone to
obtain the corresponding linear relationship. This study
mainly analyzes these factors comprehensively and ana-
lyzes the relationship between the comprehensive factors
and the water conducted zone, as shown in the following
equation.
 
426:243
H ¼ 3:41M þ 27:12b þ 1:85Inl þ 0:13 exp 5:346− þ 0:64v þ 6:11
S
where M is the mining height of coal mine operation, b is
the lithological proportion coefficient, l is the length of
the working face during coal mine operation, s is the
mining depth, and v is the advancement speed.
The obtained prediction equation of the water con-
ducted zone is used to predict the height development
of the water conducted zone in actual coal mining. The
predicted value is compared with the result obtained by
using the traditional empirical equation. The analysis
result is shown in Fig. 5.
70
Height of water flowing fractured zone
60
50
40
30
20
350 400 450 500 550
Mining depth value
Fig. 4 Relationship between water conducted zone and mining depth
Page 5 of 6 852
As shown in Fig. 5, the predicted value of the height
development of the water conducted zone is closer to
the actual value using the IoT technology researched in
this study combined with the multiple linear regression
analysis method. In addition, the predicted value obtain-
ed by this method is better than the traditional empirical
equation, and the error of the value is smaller.
Therefore, the method proposed in this study can better
predict the height development trend of the water con-
ducted zone, reduce the prediction error, and improve
the prediction accuracy.
Conclusions
The research of this study shows that the IoT technology
can be used to detect and collect data in coal mining.
Meanwhile, the Kalman filter algorithm can be used to
process the information data collected by sensors. Then,
the preprocessed data is subjected to information fusion,
and the uncertain information in the obtained data can be
processed. The Bayesian algorithm uses the probability
inference method as the basis for information fusion.
The data can be highly fused in the prediction of the
ð3Þ
height of the water conducted zone in coal mining to
obtain more accurate results. Using sensors to monitor
the status of coal mining in real time can comprehensively
understand the status of the mine, which eliminates the
need for the staff to go down to make measurements
and saves a lot of time and energy for the staff. Then,
the multiple linear regression method is used to obtain
the prediction equation of the water conducted zone on
the obtained data. After monitoring the actual engineering
data, it is found that the prediction value of the height
development of the water conducted zone by the IoT tech-
nology and multiple linear regression analysis methods is
smaller than the prediction value obtained by the tradi-
tional empirical equation. Therefore, it can be used to
accurately predict the height development of water con-
ducted zone.
There are still some deficiencies in this study.
Currently, there are few studies on the prediction of
water conducted zones with this technology. Therefore,
there are some theoretical shortcomings. At the same
time, due to time and space constraints, in this study,
only the factors influencing the height development of
the water conducted zone are selected, which is not
comprehensive enough. It is hoped that in the subse-
quent study, researchers can consider the factors that
600 650 700 affect the height of the water conducted zone more
comprehensively and obtain more accurate prediction
results.
 852 Page 6 of 6 Arab J Geosci (2020) 13:852

Fig. 5 Comparison results of Height value of water flowing fractured zone

water conducted zone heights Error value
under different prediction
60
methods

50

40

Value
30

20

10

0
Measured value Empirical formula Prediction formula
Type

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