The underground mining of coal deposits in the Upper Silesian Coal Basin (GZW) re-sults in an imbalance in the distribution of the stress in the rock mass, both in the immediate and distant surroundings of mining excavations. The occurrence of seismic tremors, among others, is the consequence of this process,. The intensities of seismic phenomena, which occur in several regions of the GZW (Bytomian Basin, Main Saddle, Main Basin, Kazimierzowska Basin, and the Jejkowice Basin) are very diverse, ranging from tremors unrecognizable by humans to strong tremors of the nature of weak earthquakes (Patyńska and Stec 2017). During the period of 15 years, i.e. from 2001 to 2015, the level of seismic activity changed and de-pended on both the intensity of the excavation work and the variability of the lithological and tectonic structures. On the other hand, the seismic activity analysis has shown that in recent years, despite a decrease in total output, seismic activity and rockburst hazard have increased. One of the rea-sons was the increase in mining output. Almost half of the output came from coal seams under the rockburst hazard. This resulted in an increase in the number of great energy tremors with the energy of 107, 108 and 109 J. It has been shown that the amount of energy tremors has a high impact on the level of the rockburst hazard. Between 2001 and 2015, as many as 20 rockburst were caused by seismic tremors above 107 J with 42 total phenomena (Patyńska 2002–2016). The purpose of characterizing the causes of this phenomenon was determined by the parameters characterizing the structure of the rock mass in places where the rockburst was recorded.

Local weather conditions have an impact on the availability of free-space optical (FSO) communication. The variation in meteorological parameters, such as temperature, humidity, and wind speed, leads to variations of the refractive index along the transmission path. These refractive index inhomogeneities produced by atmospheric turbulence induce optical turbulence which is responsible for random fluctuations in the intensity of the laser beam that carries the signal (irradiance) called scintillations that can significantly degrade the performance of FSO systems. This paper aims to investigate the feasibility of deploying FSO communication technology under scintillation effects in any urban region and atmospheric environment. To achieve that, firstly by utilizing the Hufnagel-Vally day with the Sadot and Kopeika models together, the scintillation strength for a specified region, Sulaimani City in north-eastern Iraq as an example, has been estimated through the calculation of the refractive index structure parameter (Cn2) over a period of 10 years and it was found to be at the strong turbulence level. Secondly, from the same estimated parameter, the scintillation attenuation of the signal carrying the laser beam intensity can be calculated to investigate the feasibility of FSO communication using Optysistem-7 software. The optimal link distance for north-eastern Iraq (Sulaimani City) has been found to be within the limit of about 5.5 km. Analysing the max. Q-factor, bit-error rate and signal to noise ratio for an average of 120 months between 2013–2022 assessed the best and worst seasons for FSO.