Abstract: GIS and Visualization: Environmental Applications for the Oil and Gas Industry

Stephen R. J. Sheppard, Corbin de Rubertis

As practitioners in the imperfect world of environmental and engineering studies, we see the current pace of rapid change in computer applications to our business as an opportunity to improve our more basic skills, rather than necessarily adopting whatever is the latest and greatest. In the oil and gas industry, for example, there have long been centers of computing excellence and sophistication, in areas such as remote sensing, exploration geology and process engineering. However, a wide suite of newly available, simple PC-based tools offer to revolutionize our routine work across the disciplines, and democratize what was hitherto the domain of the advanced computer specialist. Appropriately applied, such systems can vastly improve our efficiency and communications abili ies.

This paper suggests ways in which basic, low-cost computer tools such as user-friendly GIS and 3-D data visualization, can benefit a wide variety of applications, through examples and case studies drawn primarily from the oil and gas industry. These include:

-- facility siting for E&P operations
-- emergency response and crisis management
-- GIS-based data management for refineries
-- contaminated site remediation and risk assessment.

Examples of GIS studies using databases derived from remote sensing and other typical sources, will include links to environmental models and image libraries; 3-D modeling and computer animation techniques will also be illustrated.

AAPG Search and Discovery Article #90958©1995 AAPG Pacific Section Meeting, San Francisco, California