Design, Implementation, and Evaluation of an Integrated IoT-Based System for Safety and Vital-Sign Monitoring of Underground Mine Workers

Underground mines are high-risk working environments where hazardous gases, oxygen deficiency, elevated temperature, physical fatigue, and limited access to workers can lead to severe safety incidents. Delays in detecting dangerous conditions and initiating emergency responses can further increase the consequences of such incidents. This study proposes a conceptual intelligent Internet of Things (IoT)-based system for real-time monitoring of both workers' physiological conditions and their surrounding environmental conditions in underground mines. The proposed architecture consists of three main layers: a smart vest, a tunnel communication layer, and a central control station. The smart vest integrates physiological and environmental sensors to collect data such as heart rate, blood oxygen saturation, body temperature, motion status, methane, carbon monoxide, ambient oxygen concentration, temperature, and humidity. An ESP32-based processing unit is considered for local data acquisition and preliminary processing, while LoRa-based communication nodes are proposed to transmit data through underground tunnels. A central control station based on a Raspberry Pi is designed to receive, store, visualize, and manage monitoring data and emergency alerts. A threshold-based decision mechanism is initially considered for identifying potentially hazardous conditions, while the architecture is designed to support future integration of machine learning methods for personalized anomaly detection and predictive safety monitoring. The study provides a technical evaluation of the proposed architecture, its components, communication structure, operational scenarios, and implementation limitations. As a conceptual design, the proposed system does not claim field-tested performance; rather, it provides a structured framework for future prototype development, laboratory evaluation, and deployment in underground mining environments.