This book is offered as a contribution to the spread of knowledge and understanding in the field of strata mechanics in coal mining. It is written for professionals in the coal mining industry and students of mining engineering and includes some of the author's own philosophy of coal mine stability.

The best of ground control technology, 40 years in the making. Developments in Ground Control summarizes the objectives, methodology used, and major conclusions reached from papers presented and published in the International Conference on Ground Control in Mining (ICGCM) proceedings from 1981 to 2020. Because the subject areas of the papers published in the proceedings are so broad, ranging from accident training and coal/rock bursts to geology, pillar, multiseam mining, in situ stresses, roof falls, and roof supports to surface subsidence, the papers were grouped into 13 aggregate topics and addressed separately in 13 book chapters by 13 authors from 4 countries. These book chapters are a fresh look at the topics, providing new insights, sourcing older papers, and summarizing data. This is an enormous help for those seeking information on ground control. There were 1,795 papers in the 40 years of ICGCM proceedings in more than 40 ground control topical areas. It would certainly be very time consuming if not impossible to find the right papers of interest in a timely manner. This book makes it easy for interested people to find the progress, application, and achievements of certain techniques from the past 40 years and how they affected the field of ground control and the world mining industry, in particular, the United States. Generally speaking, most researchers tend to favor recent developments when performing a literature search, ignoring or considering old papers outdated. In contrast, over the last 40 years, most research findings for a specific topic in ICGCM received continuing attention for subsequent development or repeated citations if applications were successful.