Today, on Wednesday 20th November, we, along with the worldwide GIS (Geographic Information System) community, are celebrating GIS day. It is the 25th year of this event, which aims to spread the word about GIS, geography and location data. The theme of GIS day this year is ‘Mapping Minds, Shaping the Earth’. The day should inspire people to think about GIS, how much it impacts our daily lives (both directly and indirectly) and highlight how GIS has changed the way we perceive, navigate, and explore our world over the years. For an interesting history on GIS click here to visit the ESRI website.
GIS at Merlin
GIS is a key tool used in multiple workflows here at Merlin, with its implementation applicable at all project stages. Merlin uses GIS to add value to datasets, improve communication and make better business decisions. Below are a few examples of how.
How we use GIS
From project onset, Merlin uses GIS to support the important geodetic auditing of well and seismic locations, to ensure subsequent subsurface workflows are based on robust databases. Working across the globe provides the challenge of varying data quality, with different vintages of data all having a mix of geodetic references. We use GIS to QC these datasets to develop a ‘single source of truth’ database for the project.
During the interpretation stage we use GIS to analyse geographical trends which otherwise would go unnoticed in a non-geographical setting. We can evaluate these trends through time to understand their 4-dimensional nature. We add wider context to our field scale interpretations by georeferencing existing maps, for example, depositional environment, regional tectonic setting and structural elements maps (amongst others).
Towards project completion, we use GIS to simplify our information communication to clients by creating clear audience-targeted maps that provide coherent conclusions.
A real world example
When trying to understand fluid flow through a complex fractured structure, we created bubble maps to show different fluid volumes at points on the structure through time. By reviewing each time step in sequence, 4-dimensional trends in fluid flow could be pulled out, enabling the distribution of interlinked permeability to be understood. These results were used to target optimal areas for future workflow items, significantly improving production from the field.
