Abstract:
The paper presents the results of a Joint Industry Project (JIP) to explore the integrity of the management of geospatial data in geoscience software applications (GIGS – Geospatial Integrity of Geoscience Software). The International Association of Oil and Gas Producers (OGP), Survey and Positioning (S&P) Committee administered the project; the members included 13 international O&G operating companies. The paper will be of interest and applicable to geoscience software architects and developers, geoscience software users, geoscientists, data managers and reservoir engineers and their respective asset and management teams. The JIP was formed to investigate the difficulties, experienced by both designers and users of geoscience software, of retaining the integrity of coordinate data when being processed, manipulated and interpreted in geoscience applications. The geoscience applications are being used to develop an understanding of sub-surface features from geophysical, geological, well log and other ancillary supporting data that have been loaded into the application. Clearly such information will lead to the placement of rigs to drill wells. The placement and subsequent management of these wells and the associated reservoirs are highly dependent on an accurate understanding and mapping of the data. This dependency is the primary motivation and driver for this JIP. The results of the JIP work are presented in the form of a new OGP guideline. The guideline contains geospatial requirements and recommendations with two associated annexes, providing a ‘roadmap’ to evaluate or review a given G&G application (annex 1), and a testing regime with an associated test dataset (annex2) to allow for such a review to be undertaken. An introduction, brief history, business case, and some examples of the guideline products, are included; these are to assist the reader in understanding the scope, the framework, the context and the potential impact of the work.
