James Trevelyan
Department of Mechanical and Materials Engineering
The University of Western Australia
Nedlands 6907
E-mail: jamest@mech.uwa.edu.au

This paper explains why mine action programmes need improvement and describes some significant barriers which may explain some of the frustration articulated widely within the demining community. These barriers are explained in terms of an inappropriate focus on mine clearance rather than releasing uncontaminated land, and conflicting interests of the many stakeholders involved. Several suggestions are presented to overcome these barriers. However, analysis of available mine clearance data suggests that it will be difficult or impossible to objectively measure improvements using currently available data. Significantly improved data is needed for objective performance criteria which are essential for creating useful incentives for improving mine action.

This is a new term that has emerged since 1996. It describes an integrated approach to the landmine clearance problem in its broadest sense.

Ultimately, the problem we have to address is the task of removing the explosive devices that cause deaths and injuries and keep people from using their land. This is slow and expensive.

The term 'Mine Action' usually includes the following aspects (1, 16 ):

1. mine awareness and risk reduction education;
2. minefield survey, mapping, marking, and clearance;
3. victim assistance, including rehabilitation and reintegration;
4. advocacy to stigmatise the use of landmines and support a total ban on antipersonnel landmines.

Reference 5 presents a comprehensive list of the activities involved in mine action.

Colin King, editor of Janes reference 'Mines and Mine Clearance' (2), has written a highly informative article (3) on improving the process of mine action. Like us, he focuses mainly on the technical issues associated with clearance that is the major long term solution to the problem and is where much of the money is spent.

However there are many issues at stake here and the main one is time. It takes a long time to remove landmine and UXO contamination from affected land, and we have to make the best use of available resources. This means making the best use of what land resources can be made available while much of the rest of the land is unusable. It also means finding ways to minimise exposure of the inhabitants to mines and UXO by making them aware of mines, and clearing the places they have to live in first. It also means long term solutions to ease the plight of victims. Finally, we also need to ensure that everyone understands the importance of avoiding the future use of mines (and of armed conflict if possible).

The initial response to humanitarian mine clearance on a large scale, in Afghanistan, was to set up a "Mine Clearance Programme" under the United Nations Office for Coordinating Humanitarian Assistance for Afghanistan (UNOCHA). This experience showed that dealing with the mine problem in a cost-effective manner required far more than a group of mine clearance teams with a central office to assign tasks and keep track of what they had completed. A series of disappointments in other countries such as Angola, Mozambique and Bosnia, and slow progress in Cambodia, has helped change the approach to mine clearance.

Different countries, even regions within countries, have had different mine problems and different approaches to coordinating clearance programmes. However these experiences have shown that a common set of tasks need to be undertaken by any organisation coordinating mine and UXO clearance efforts. Gradually, these organisations have become recognized as "Mine Action Centres" and there is now wide support for better world-wide coordination of mine clearance and support activities such as management staff training, equipment specification, fund raising and evaluation.

Many organisations, particularly long established UN and humanitarian aid agencies, have viewed mine clearance as just another facet of community development. Many have suggested that mine clearance can be handled better as part of an integrated approach to development, along with infrastructure such as irrigation, roads, housing and so on. In practice, the presence of mines and unexploded ordnance has caused such widespread disruption that systematic clearance has to precede any other aspect of community development. A piecemeal approach often leads to fragmented efforts that increase the cost of clearance, and even require clearance of the same land more than once because inadequate technical standards were applied first time round.

At the same time as a broad consensus has emerged on effective ways to coordinate mine clearance(1,5,16), there is frustration that efforts to reduce clearance costs have so far been ineffective(3,4). Huge investments in research and development have provided few useful results and there is considerable disagreement within the mine action community on future priorities. Many have expressed dismay at the size of research and development budgets and argue that this money could have been better spent by employing more deminers in the field. Unofficial comments from funding agencies echo this frustration: some have expressed reluctance to fund mine action programmes on large scale until they can be confident that the money will be spent in the most effective way possible. The absence of well-recognised criteria for evaluating mine action programme performance reinforces this perception.

The United States Government established its 2010 Demining Initiative to encourage more funding for demining efforts world-wide. However, the target date seems unrealistic given present clearance rates. Realistic forecasts suggest that 30 - 50 years work is needed in several countries at present rates of progress.

The major suggestions for improvements have been:

This aspect of demining technology has received more attention than any other. Any examination of current demining techniques shows that the major difficulty in mine clearance is finding the mines. Metal detectors work because (for all practical purposes) even the smallest mines have enough metal to be detected. The practical problem is the number of false alarms - metal junk ranging from nails, tin cans, shell fragments and rubbish.

Increasing detector sensitivity is not the answer. This simply increases the false alarm rate.

The 'silver bullet' solution is an explosive detector that, ideally, would quickly confirm that the ground ahead is free of any explosive devices. However, this has proved to be an elusive goal despite hundreds of millions of dollars spent by both miltary and civilian research teams.

The absence of progress has not deterred funding agencies because a solution to this problem is an urgent requirement for most defence establishments. Explosive detection devices have become a useful defence against terrorist activities, but have not yet reached the sensitivity needed to detect buried mines.

The only significant practical improvement to mine detectors has overcome the problem of mineralized soil that many detectors confuse with metal targets. Moderate minerlization makes most mine detectors useless. Australian gold prospectors have had to overcome this problem that is many times worse in Australian gold fields than any minefield. The Australian Minelab detector is now commercially available (6)— as a specific adaptation for demining operations (6). This detector makes manual clearance cheaper in large areas of Cambodia and parts of Bosnia. Other countries have localised problems. For instance, Afghanistan brick kilns have significant mineralization problems.

There are several detection devices in different stages of research and development. Some of these incorporate several sensing methods such as metal detection, ground penetrating radar, passive infra-red detection, nuclear quadrapole resonance, ion diffusion, nuclear particle scattering and acoustics (7). However none of these seems to offer any promise of a significant improvement in cost effective mine detection.

While no machine can neutralise mines with the required level of reliability, many machines have been used to support demining operations to increase the effectiveness of manual clearance.

Flails have been used in demining operations in Afghanistan, Angola, Cambodia, Bosnia and Croatia with many different perceptions on their effectiveness. In Afghanistan the cost of using flails, in the end, turned out to be up to 6 times the cost of equivalent manual clearance methods. In Bosnia and Croatia, field staff like them for clearing thick vegetation. The following quote from CMAC ends with the most frequently asked question (8):

Particularly in Bosnia and Croatia, flails have been used to support demining operations by military teams from peace keeping forces. The costs have been absorbed in the peace keeping contributions from the participating states and it has not been possible to assess their cost-effectiveness as part of the mine action programmes.

Figure 1 Flail in operation.

Demining machinery has been used effectively on some specific problems, such as clearance of the East/West German border minefields. Similar machinery was tested on dense barrier minefields surrounding Angolan villages but with very mixed responses from observers.

MECHEM is one company has used machinery extensively and has been very forthcoming on operating costs and effectiveness. They have shown that machinery can be used effectively in their operations:

1. A wide range of machines is available so that appropriate machinery can be used on demining tasks in that machines can be used to good effect.
2. Mine-proof vehicles (again a variety with different levels of protection) are useful in many operations.
3. Highly skilled technical support is available to adapt and modify machines for specific tasks at short notice, as well as carrying out major repairs when needed.

While much of the debate has been on machines specifically designed for mine clearance, other more mundane machines have proved their effectiveness.

HALO Trust have developed a tractor-mounted vegetation cutter for reducing the time needed for vegetation clearance in Cambodia, and claim (according to second hand sources) a 50% reduction in clearance times. The tractor works on several sites in rotation. It drives along cleared edges and cuts a strip of vegetation alongside.

Figure 2 Vegetation mulcher

MgM, a German demining NGO, developed another mulching device mounted on a mine-resistant vehicle for clearing road verges in Angola (figure 2).

In Afghanistan, backhoe excavators have been used by the UN Mine Action Programme and HALO Trust. The machines have had 6 mm steel armour and 25 mm thick polycarbonate window panels added. However, some unofficial concern has been expressed recently about the inefficient way in which these machines are being used.

As with detectors, there are several developments being researched including, for example, the use of magnets to collect metal fragments to reduce the manual clearance effort needed after the machines have been used (9).

Frustrated by the lack of effective new technology, mine action managers have tried to improve their resource allocation to reduce demining costs. Some notable improvements have been made, particularly in Afghanistan where the increased use of mine dogs has significantly reduced clearance costs and increased the land clearance rate. The mine dog programme has been expanded considerably at the expense of manual demining teams. (10)

There are, however, significant obstacles to overcome in this process. While a focus on effective resource utilisation has been a core issue for commercial organisations for decades, few mine action managers have useful experience. The typical mine action manager has had military engineering experience and some may have had operations research training in their original engineering degree programme. Few have ever had to focus on cost reduction in the way commercial operations need to. This problem has recently been identified by a Mine Action Training Needs Analysis conducted by the UN.

Another obstacle is the common situation in which ex-patriate staff either explicitly or implicitly take responsibility for executive accountability. Local staff will be reluctant to identify with the need for better resource allocation unless they carry full responsibility for outcomes and can see that these changes are necessary. Ex-patriate advisers often lack the cross-cultural skills to avoid this difficulty.

Many people have argued that there are simple and low cost technologies that could improve mine action effectiveness (11). Protective clothing and tools can readily be manufactured in cities where mine action programmes are based, at considerably less cost than importing expensive military standard equipment commonly in use. Some have proposed machines for mine clearance that can be built locally, for example the Tempest currently under development in Cambodia (12).

Figure 3 Mini-shovel (approx 70 mm wide) produced in Cambodia.

Several programmes are using locally produced tools such as prodders, but these efforts have not yet made a major impact on costs or overall productivity of mine clearance.

Two factors limit opportunities for local manufacture. The first is a reluctance by mine action managers to accept that local manufacturers can meet reasonable quality standards. The second is that the expensive military standard imports can often be obtained as in-kind contributions from donor governments anxious to demonstrate their performance on the landmine issue. If such contributions can be obtained without affecting the cash flow of the program, then they will be accepted even if the equipment does not meet all the requirements.

King has identified several factors that have hindered the development of effective technologies, including:

• Program managers are often too concerned with day-to-day 'crises' and fund raising to spend time defining their requirements for technology improvement.
• Research and development engineers have little understanding of the real problems faced by deminers and work on equipment that is never likely to be useful.

We take a different view and see these as superficial manifestations of a deeper problem. In fact these have been partly overcome. The Cambodian Mine Action Centre (CMAC) has defined requirements for new technology and operates a comprehensive trial programme that many other programs would like to emulate. Each year CMAC runs carefully controlled trials on both commercial equipment and prototypes from research laboratories. Until recently it has been difficult to obtain any feedback, but recently CMAC has opened a web site that publishes useful reports (8).

Our own research has identified three significant 'roadblocks' that could limit the effect of any attempts at improvement, no matter how useful it may seem to be.

1. A focus on mine and UXO clearance rather than on making uncontaminated land available for use,
2. Conflicts between the interests of the many stakeholders involved in mine action, and,
3. The data currently being collected in survey tasks and mine clearance does not provide sufficient accuracy to provide an objective means to monitor performance improvements.

This focus obscures the goal of making uncontaminated land available for use. Fortunately this is being recognised, gradually, but organisational change may be essential to reflect this in operational priorities.

A technical adviser who recently returned from Bosnia told us he had been working with a demining team that spent three months clearing a road verge on the approach to a village. No mines were found after weeks of manual probing since there was too much metal present (fragments) to use metal detectors effectively. There had been no technical (level 2) survey to confirm the presence of mines. Again, in Cambodia, there are few technical surveys to confirm the presence of mines before mine clearance operations begin. The focus is on mine clearance.

A focus on making uncontaminated land available for use changes priorities. A technical survey can identify which land definitely contains mines and which does not. The land that is not mined can often be made available for immediate use. The cost of making this land available is often much less than mined land that needs intensive manual clearance. Therefore, particularly in the early stages of mine clearance, it should make more sense to find all the uncontaminated land as quickly as possible, and to switch resources from technical surveys to manual clearance later on when uncontaminated land is harder to find.

We have started to identify significant conflicts between the interests of the many stakeholders involved in mine action. Indeed, the number of stakeholders involved is large, and this alone makes any progress difficult. The following diagram shows most of the major 'generic' stakeholders in mine action programs, but the real number is much greater in each individual program.

Some of the conflicts are complicated by the apparent disparity between the stated objectives of a stakeholder and its individual members. Some examples will suffice to illustrate this in the current context.

An obvious conflict is evident from a comment made by a deminer:

Organisations employing deminers present themselves as "effective mine clearance organisations".

A technical adviser, on a one year attachment to a national government mine action centre, said (during extended informal interviews):

The conflict is evident in his title "technical adviser" that implies a role in which he provides advice on technical issues. However he sees an executive accountability role for himself with (in practice) interests that differ from those of the local mine action centre administration that has designated financial responsibility.

The role of commercial organisations is regarded with great suspicion by many people involved in demining. Yet, commercial practices need to be adopted to improve mine action effectiveness.

There are conflicts of interests between some donors and some government controlled mine action programs (15, 17). For example, many western governments are sensitive to widespread criticism of the way in which the Taliban government in Afghanistan treats women. The US, in particular, has resorted to cruise missile strikes to attack camps in Afghanistan that, they allege, are run by people who have attacked US embassies. Some conflicts are less obvious. Some donors focus on humanitarian concerns: they want to eliminate the landmine threat to destitute and displaced refugees. Their interests often lead to conflicts in priorities when planning mine action tasks because local authorities may prefer mine clearance in economically important areas.

It is important to understand that the interests of different stakeholders are often not well understood by the participants. For instance, some ex-patriate technical advisers have commented that:

The view of the local staff can be very different:

The first steps towards a resolution of these problems is to clearly articulate the stakeholders and their interests, particularly those of the people most closely involved in the process. This needs sensitive and careful assistance because it is easy to create offence by careless choice of words, particularly as communication is needed across cultural boundaries.

• Funding provider, donors
• Mine action staff and technical advisers
• Deminers
• Local authorities where demining is taking place
• Local community (direct beneficiaries)

Key differences in interests will emerge through this process.

The second step is to find creative ways to align disparate interests with a more effective mine action process. It is not unlike what has been described as 'principled negotiation'(13) — a process in which parties to a negotiation need to create solutions through which all participants can advance their key interests.

This requires agreement on objective criteria for stakeholders to assess performance and to perceive improvements in outcomes. It is likely that each stakeholder will require different outcomes. The donors may be satisfied with abstract outcomes such as improvements in the rate of land release, but deminers will probably want more tangible and immediate outcomes that are relevant to their personal needs.

The third step is to educate all participants so that they can all understand the part they play in the whole process, and how improvements will bring benefits to everyone. Cross cultural skills will be essential here to present the new framework in terms which are meaningful for each stakeholder. Large operational groups will also need training to help them make changes (within operational constraints) so that they can begin to make improvements themselves. This is a difficult step that takes time. Training management and senior staff is not sufficient: these advances will only work if the entire workforce embraces a new way of doing business. If it isdone successfully, all the participants will be able to see that their major interests are being met through improvements to the mine action process.

Once this positive framework of interests and perceptions has been created, there will be incentives and capabilities across the spectrum of stakeholders to make gradual improvements, and to gain confidence that positive outcomes can be achieved through those improvements. Without this positive environment, it is unlikely that new mine clearance technologies will be effectively used at field level.

In the meantime, there are technical developments that have to be pursued. The major requirement is for objective performance measures that will reveal improvements and show where changes are likely to provide the greatest benefits. Computer based models of the mine action process can greatly help with this.

The recent conference held at James Madison University "Standards and Measures for Success" (15,16,17) discussed performance principally for measuring the impact of a mine action programme. While measures like this are useful, there are many value judgements needed to quantify benefits such as reducing mine injuries, reducing fear, building political stability and so on. These have limited use when thinking about improving the clearance process which involves the use of real resources.
If we are to improve resource utilisation, and distribute the benefits, we need accurate and objective measures.

It is clear from our research that insufficient data is being collected to provide objective performance measures.

In 1997 we started analysing minefield clearance statistics from Afghanistan to better understand the demining process before trying to make improvements. Mine Clearance Planning Agency (MCPA) provided clearance records on about 2500 minefields cleared between 1993 and 1997. We extracted data on minefields that were cleared manually by single teams in major land use and surface type groupings:

We derived statistical models (14) from the data in these sub-groups that explained the clearance effort as a function of:

It turned out that the number of devices destroyed was not a significant factor in the model. This was no surprise: the time to destroy each device is small compared with the time needed to find them.

Using the model, we then calculated the ratio between the actual time needed to clear the minefield and the time predicted by the model based on the actual number of fragments and explosive devices found (referred to as 'difficulty' ratio in the graphs and modelling). The scatter in results tells us how well the model explains the factors that determine the time needed for clearance.

Figure 1 Clearance time (difficulty) ratio histogram for agricultural land, soft surface conditions modelled by minefield area alone - refer to text

If the model is based entirely on the minefield area alone (i.e. disregarding land use, surface type and fragments found) the clearance time can be between one tenth and 25 times the clearance time predicted from the model. In other words there is a huge variation in clearance rates. Figure 1 shows a histogram of 'difficulty ratio' based on area alone.

Figure 2 Clearance time (difficulty) ratio histogram for agricultural land, soft surface conditions modelled by minefield area, fragments, and total devices found - refer to text

By taking all the known factors into account, the clearance time is between half and twice the time predicted by the statistical models (see figure 2). In simple terms, the factors listed above account for most of the variation in clearance rates.

Figure 3 Scatter plot showing clearance time (difficulty) ratio histogram for agricultural land, soft surface conditions modelled by minefield area, fragments, and total devices found. Numbers indicate the land use code (1=grazing, 4=agriculture) and colour indicates the surface condition (blue is soft, red is hard).

However, there are still variations that are not explained by any of the data. It is possible that errors in the data could account for some of this variation, but we have no means of checking this.

What can we learn from this?

First, the Afghanistan data provides data that explains most of the variation in minefield clearance rates.

Second, the remaining variability is large enough to mask all but 'huge' changes in performance. Suppose, at some stage, new technology is introduced that should improve clearance rates by 15%. A mine clearance team is assigned to clear ten minefields to evaluate the method (10 - 18 months work). The variability in the data shows that it is most unlikely that we would notice a statistical performance improvement! Results from at least 30 minefields would be needed and there would still be substantial doubt about the results. This leads to the next conclusions.

Third, more data needs to be recorded so that the effort needed for all tasks involved in minefield clearance and survey can be measured. Currently the data recorded is as follows:

Considerably more data needs to be recorded.

In Cambodia, less data is recorded. There are no records of vegetation, nor of the time needed to deal with it, even though it is acknowledged that 50 - 70% of the clearance effort is needed to cut vegetation and check for tripwires.

The same is believed to be the case in Bosnia.

This leads to the fourth conclusion, that the data currently being collected in most demining programmes cannot be used as a basis for performance evaluation.

Even though improved technology is unlikely to help in the short term, it should be possible to obtain significant improvements by improving the way in which resources are allocated in mine action programs.

However, our research shows that unresolved conflicts between the interests of the many stakeholders in mine action are impeding performance improvements, and are likely to frustrate any attempt to improve clearance improvements through the introduction of new technology or improved resource allocation.

Our research also shows that much more data related to task performance is needed to measure any performance improvement that may come from improved resource allocation or adopting new technology.

One way to explore ways to improve resource allocation is computer modelling of the mine action process. However, our research shows that these computer models cannot be validated without significant improvements in data collection.

1. UN Policy on Mine Action, published at UN Landmine Database: http://www.un.org/Depts/Landmine/, retrieved on 24^th June 1999, local reference copy held at:
2. Janes (1997, 1998) Mines and Mine Clearance, King, C. (Editor), Thompson Publishing, UK.
3. King, C. (1998) Demining: Enhancing the Process. Journal of Humanitarian Demining Vol 2, No. 2. Available at: http://www.hdic.jmu.edu/hdic/journal/2.2/features/king.htm
4. Tariq, Q. (1998) Demining Technologies. Journal of Humanitarian Demining Vol 2 No. 3. Available at http://www.hdic.jmu.edu/hdic/journal/2.3/features/tech.htm.
5. Trevelyan, J. P. (1999) Mine Action Tasks - Functional Analysis of Mine Action. Available at:http://www.mech.uwa.edu.au/jpt/demining/pp-minact/tasks.html. (Presents a detailed list of all the tasks associated with mine action)
6. Minelab (1999) F1A4 Mine Detector Specifications, Minelab Electronics Pty Ltd, Adelaide, South Australia. Also available from http://www.milcanada.com/F1A4-specs.html.
7. IEE (1998) Proceedings of International Conference on Detection of Abandoned Landmines, Edinburgh, October 1998, IEE Publications, London.
8. CMAC (1999) Report on use of Flails. Cambodian Mine Action Centre, Phnom Penh, Cambodia. Available from: http://www.camnet.com.kh/cmac/fll-apr.htm
9. Trevelyan, J. P. (1999) Magnetic Fragment Collection. Available from http://www.mech.uwa.edu.au/jpt/demining/
10. MAPA (1999) Mine Action Plan for Afghanistan 1999, from Mine Action Program for Afghanistan office, Islamabad, Pakistan.
11. Trevelyan, J. P. (1997) Better tools for deminers. International Workshop on Sustainable Humanitarian Demining, Zagreb, September 1997, pp s6.1-s6.12.
12. Prince, M (1999). Tempest - a mechanical approach to vegetation clearance. Personal communication. Information available from http://www.mech.uwa.edu.au/jpt/demining/deminer-needs/mechan.html
13. Fisher and Urey (1990) Getting to Yes
14. Trevelyan, J. P. (1997) Modelling minefield clearance performance. Technical Report, Department of Mechanical and Materials Engineering, The Univerity of Western Australia, Nedlands. (Downloadable Word 97/98 document) (Downloadable ZIP of analysis tools and data)
15. Blagden, P. (1998) Measurement of Success in Mine Action. Conference on Standards and Success in Demining, James Madison University, October 1998, pages D1.1-5. Also verbal proceedings pages 1-2.
16. Thompson, H. (1998) Donor influence on safety and productivity in humanitarian demining. Conference on Standards and Success in Demining, James Madison University, October 1998, pages A8.1-10.
17. McAslan, A. (1998) A functional analysis of mine action. Conference on Standards and Success in Demining, James Madison University, October 1998, pages A3.1-10.