Smart Mine Solution

Background

The National Development and Reform Commission, the National Energy Administration, the Ministry of Emergency Management, the National Coal Mine Safety Administration, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of Science and Technology, and the Ministry of Education of the People’s Republic of China jointly issued the Guiding Opinions on Accelerating Intelligent Development of Coal Mines (hereinafter referred to as "Opinions"). The Opinions clearly point out that coal mine intelligentization is a core technical support for high quality development of the coal industry. By empowering modern coal exploitation with the aid of artificial intelligence, industrial IoT, cloud computing, big data, robots, and intelligent equipment, we are able to build an intelligent system that features overall sensing, real-time interconnection, analysis & decision-making, self-directed learning, dynamic forecasting and coordination control. This system allows intelligent operation in processes such as coal mine exploitation, digging (cracking), transportation, ventilation, washing & separation, safety guarantee and business management. Therefore, it plays a vital role in increasing the safe production level of coal mines and ensuring a stable supply of coal.

By now, H3C has provided domestic top 50 coal corporations with informatization support services for over ten years. H3C products and solutions are commonly seen during the informatization construction process of major domestic coal corporations. As a solution provider on informatization construction in the coal industry for a long time, H3C, with its Digital Brain Project, based on the coal intelligentization idea put forward by the state, and depending on the strong industry-university-research advantages of Tsinghua Unigroup, has summed up a set of intelligent mine solutions suitable for the development of the coal industry through continuous exploration and practice.

Overview

"H3C Digital Brain Project" uses the digital infrastructure, digital service capability platform, active security and unified management to jointly constitute the four digital foundations of the "Intelligent Digital Platform". Based on the four digital capability foundations, as well as experience accumulated when working together with its numerous ecological partners in intelligent applications of the coal industry, H3C is increasingly equipping its customers in the coal industry with intelligent coal solutions that incorporate artificial intelligence, industrial IoT, cloud computing, and big data. H3C also helps customers and partners in the coal industry continuously increase their capabilities in production management and safe operation in the tide of coal intelligentization.

Overall framework of H3C intelligent solution in the coal industry

By relying on the "Digital Brain Project", H3C intelligent solution for mines sorts out, standardizes and unifies different kinds of traditional data that are dispersed by starting from the hardware infrastructure dimension at the bottom layer gradually to upper layers via informatization technology means that are based on cloud computing, big data, digitization and artificial intelligence. H3C intelligent solution for mines integrates the bottom-layer information infrastructure, intermediate digital platform, and upper-layer customer service system and partners’ systems. Therefore, the solution can gradually lay a solid foundation for the intelligentization of the coal industry from bottom to top in conducting services. In addition, the intermediate digital service platform, which serves as a connecting link with its digital transformation capability, provides upper-layer services with a variety of digital capabilities.

Intelligent data analysis application for the coal industry: H3C, together with Beijing Unigroup Data Intelligence Science & Technology Co., Ltd., introduces a solution suitable for application scenarios in the coal industry, big data analysis in the coal industry and the dashboard.

Intelligent vision application for the coal industry: They jointly introduce a whole-process monitoring solution based on production visualization in the coal industry, realizing whole-process visualization management from mining, transportation to storage, and so on.

Intelligent connection application for the coal industry: H3C and its partners jointly introduce underground communication products suitable for the underground loop-network production environment. In addition, H3C also integrates the advanced SDN technology with the industrial switch to realize deployment of intelligent connection for the entire network in the coal industry.

Intelligent active security application for the coal industry: By relying on long-term product research & development and experience in data security, H3C designs a set of multi-dimension security products and solutions on industrial production informatization from industrial security audit to industrial security protection for industrial production scenarios. In addition, the security products and solutions are integrated with H3C’s existing security firewall at the traditional data communication layer to form an active protection system in the entire network and the whole process.

Intelligent O&M system for the coal industry: H3C is the first to conduct research and development on corporation-level comprehensive O&M management platform software applications and put them into practice. Through the platform, the coal corporation realizes batch control for a bulk of equipment and data, flexible organization structure, safe and reliable platform support, and convenient and efficient horizontal-extension O&M support system.

Highlights

Intelligent cloud deployment

Based on the cloud computing technology and hyper-convergence technology which are advanced and mature, corporation-level platforms are established in the coal industry. By making full use of the advantage of the cloud computing platform which is flexible, reliable and resilient in deployment and easy in data management during the service management process, the coal corporation realizes reasonable investment, quick platform deployment and a support platform of high security and high scalability.

Intelligent integrated management

Through deployment and establishment with the advanced and reliable industrial network and security equipment, the coal corporation realizes integrated management for both ground and underground communication equipment in the coal industry.

By integrating with the cloud platform at the upper layer, the SDN technology, and H3C integrated management platform, an information system support platform is formed to realize intelligent management ranging from service, environment, hardware, data, to system.

Intelligent active security

Based on the advanced security posture awareness system and the cloud security management system, the active security management capability is obtained at the platform level.

H3C’s EPS management system helps realize overall management and security access to integrated informatization terminals.

H3C industrial security equipment helps realize controllability, preventability, early warning of risks for production informatization security, and so on.

Intelligent data analysis

The advanced big data analysis system helps establish a service data and analysis framework based on multiple perspectives such as enterprise management performance and value chains to conduct overall data analysis and display by centering on the elements of production and operating activities of enterprises.

Customer’s value

Integrated cloud delivery: Establish a cloud platform for the coal industry to deliver the relevant resources such as laaS, PaaS and DaaS in a centralized way.

Centralized data application: Service data and service platforms are deployed over the headquarters cloud in a centralized way for ease of data governance and data value exploration in the future.

Integrated management: For a bulk of equipment and data at the corporation level, integrated management is based on microservices and full service perspective.

Cooperation ecology customization: Providing customers and partners in the coal industry with customized services, as well as a favorable cooperation ecology and support platform.

Improving quality and efficiency: Helping increase the comprehensive utilization efficiency, reduce overlapping investment and construction, and enhance the capability of enterprises on business management predictability and sustainability.

Active security: Cloud technology, advanced active security equipment and professional security services help realize overall industry-specific security services.

Practice

With coal as its main business, Jizhong Energy Group is a large state-owned enterprise in Hebei Province that is engaged in multiple sectors at the same time. The group has more than a dozen of subsidiaries and ranks No. 10 on China’s coal enterprises ranking list. In 2019, the group ranked No. 347 on the Global 500 List. Considering the contradictory relation between the traditional IT architecture and the rapid development of enterprises, a new cloud digital platform urgently needs to be established. The industrial cloud data center project of Jizhong Energy Group, which follows the principle of "business-driven, overall planning, top-level design, opening-up and cooperation", builds a data center based on the cloud application platform to provide Jizhong Energy Group with infrastructure on industrial Internet research, IT infrastructure upgrade and industry-wide information service development. With the industrial Internet service as a breakthrough point, H3C aims to become a cloud service provider for industrial enterprises in Hebei Province in the future.

Topology design for platform architecture

H3C cloud-network-security integrated solution helps Jizhong Energy Group establish a large provincial-level industrial cloud data center that is safe, open, resilient and flexible to provide high-quality industrial Internet infrastructure. While providing Jizhong Energy Group and its subsidiaries with a platform of unified and centralized data and applications, H3C is laying a solid foundation for becoming an industrial Internet service provider in Hebei Province.