Data Management
Data Management, also known as seismic data management or subsurface data management, simply refers to how oil and gas companies store, organize and access their volumes of geophysical, geological and other subsurface data that they have acquired over time. Since data has been collected and recorded in a variety of ways using a variety of media over the years, many oil and gas companies have data stored in multiple formats in both physical and digital storage locations. Since seismic data is extremely valuable and rarely ever destroyed, oil and gas companies often convert their legacy data onto new media or disks for reprocessing or interpretation.
The same holds true for other domains such as well logs, microseismic and other data types, and it is recommended that a domain expert be involved in the management and organization of any subsurface data. Since the SEG is primarily focused on seismic, this data type has had the largest influence on the data management process described below.
Steps for successful seismic data management:
- Inventory - service company and/or internal staff audits the physical inventory of seismic data at each storage location.
- Conversion - data is converted from legacy formats onto modern media
- Capture - all relevant metadata is captured to ensure the data can be organized properly
- Organization - metadata and subsurface data are compiled into a secure database
- Verification - service company and/or internal staff verify the data has been captured and organized properly
- Storage - data is stored digitally on secure servers, ideally in a datacenter with a back-up location
- Access - this step varies depending on the service provider, data can be accessed via file system or map portal, depending on the database