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    R-evolution at Vale legacy mine site: digital twin insights for closure engineers

    April 15, 2026|

    Reviewed by Tom Sullivan

    R-evolution at Vale legacy mine site: digital twin insights for closure engineers

    First reported on International Mining – News

    30 Second Briefing

    R-evolution, Hexagon’s green-tech subsidiary, has begun its first missions using hybrid airborne imagery and LiDAR over a Vale legacy mine site as part of the Hexagon Green Cubes digital twin programme. The system fuses high-resolution optical data with LiDAR-derived elevation models to capture complex topography, waste dumps and water bodies in a single georeferenced dataset. For mine closure and reclamation teams, this enables more accurate volumetrics, subsidence detection and slope stability assessment than conventional photogrammetry alone.

    Technical Brief

    • Hybrid sensor package is being flown over a Vale legacy mine site under Hexagon’s Green Cubes programme.
    • R-evolution is operating the missions as Hexagon’s dedicated green-technology subsidiary within the mining portfolio.
    • Green Cubes is structured as a digital twin framework specifically targeting complex post-mining landscapes and legacies.
    • Airborne platform is configured to capture both surface morphology and vegetation/water features in a single pass.
    • Data acquisition is being aligned with reclamation workflows, including long-term monitoring of legacy waste facilities.
    • Vale’s legacy site provides a testbed for scaling the Green Cubes methodology to other closed mines.
    • Outputs are intended to integrate with Hexagon’s wider mine planning and environmental management software ecosystem.
    • Similar hybrid airborne campaigns are expected to be deployed across additional extractive sites as Green Cubes matures.

    Our Take

    Hexagon’s work with R-evolution at the Vale legacy mine site sits alongside its recent push into high-spec monitoring hardware such as IDS GeoRadar’s ArcSAR Neo and the Level 9 Vehicle Intervention System, signalling a strategy to cover both active pit safety and long-term legacy site stewardship with the same digital toolbox.

    Across our Mining coverage, Hexagon increasingly appears in ‘Projects’ and ‘Sustainability’ pieces rather than pure hardware announcements, suggesting operators now see its platforms as part of mine-closure and ESG performance narratives, not just operational efficiency.

    The Green Cubes initiative at a Vale legacy site echoes Hexagon’s MoU with Ma’aden on digital mines, indicating that major miners are testing Hexagon’s environmental and imaging solutions in both greenfield digital operations and brownfield/closure contexts, which could accelerate standardisation of monitoring approaches across portfolios.

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    Prepared by collating external sources, AI-assisted tools, and Geomechanics.io’s proprietary mining database, then reviewed for technical accuracy & edited by our geotechnical team.

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