Selection of Employees for Performing Work Activities in Currently Used Ventilation Systems in Hard Coal Mining

The way in which rescue actions are carried out in a hard coal mine is conditioned by a number of factors, including the type, scale, and location of the hazard; location of employees at the danger and level of their endangerment; and the ventilation system used in the impacted area. In this article, the importance and necessity to take into account a human factor, specifically the propensity for risky behavior, alongside the selection of rescuers for rescue action is pointed out. As an introduction to the key research studies presented in this article, main ventilation systems used in hard coal mines are described and three real cases of natural hazard occurrences in hard coal mines are discussed. An analysis of these events has shown that the degree of difficulty of a rescue action depends, among other aspects, on the ventilation system applied. Next, a study covering a synthetic assessment of 25 mining rescuers taking into account the ‘risky behavior’ parameter is presented. The results were interpreted considering the—described earlier—cases of hazard occurrence in coal mines and ventilation systems applied there. For the research sample, a selection of rescuers to carry out actions in particular types of ventilation systems, taking as a criterion the mark they obtained in the synthetic assessment, is proposed.