GeoTrek meets the needs of organizations needing to maximize the value of information in legacy stores, and those aggressively adopting new standards based systems. It uses web-based technology to allow single point access to data stores and repositories regardless of their base technology, vintage, or geographical location. It is designed to meet the challenges facing:

• Asset managers that need access information from a variety of sources to make good business decisions.
• Professional Geoscientists and Engineers needing to access technical and commercial data from a variety of data stores to optimize analyses.
• Data managers and data administrators needing to collate, quality control and manage the information asset.
• Data providers wanting to offer customers easy access to their assets and easy and secure ordering of data

GeoTrek takes advantage of the experience and expertise of petroleum companies to design and implement a web-enabled software offering:

• Better access to data, information and knowledge to discover, develop and deplete oil and gas fields
• Reduction in the cost of finding, organizing, and distributing data, information and knowledge
• More efficient buying, selling and trading of your data, information and knowledge via the Internet facilities

Specific features include:

• It has intuitive access to available data stores regardless of base technology, vintage, or geographic location
• It has both geographical and text based views of your data
• It enables users access to a variety of data models
• It is a solution that can handle mixed legacy/new standards based solutions
  
• It enables the selection, requesting and exporting of data
• It takes advantage of the benefits of Internet and intranet technologies and communication protocols

In summary, GeoTrek has:

• Browsing capabilities that enable interactive geographical access to all your data stores
• No vested interest or dependency in the underlying store technologies/installed base, including data base management systems, data models and specialized software applications.
• Capabilities to exploit the mature and emerging world wide web technologies that are here to stay for the foreseeable future
• Capabilities to improve geoscientists work productivity.

Back to top

General

GeoTrek provides the means for users to view and select data from a variety of different data sources. It consists of a client data browser, matching data servers that interface to databases or files, and broker servers that provide indexes to the data sources available.

The system is designed on the principle that the data of interest is downloaded to the user’s computer for viewing and selection. Once the data has been downloaded, the user works on it - choosing different views and selecting the items of interest- without repeated requests back to the servers. However the servers provide the ability to ensure that only the data items of interest - in a specified geographical area, with particular attribute values, or related to other specified items - are downloaded to the client.

Back to top

Functionality Highlights

Functionality highlights include:

• 2-dimensional map view of appropriate items, with the usual capabilities to zoom and pan.
• Tabular views of the attributes of items, with the ability to retrieve and view related data items.
• Selection of items on the map or table views, with automatic selection of related items in different views.
• Querying and Sorting a table and selecting rows in a table according to the values in one or more columns.
• Hiding, and dropping, of items that are not of interest.
• Reporting select items, including the export of a tabular view to a spreadsheet.
• Choosing new data sources, or removing those that are not of interest.
• Choosing an area of interest, and finding which sources have data in that area.

Back to top

Technology Highlights

GeoTrek does not rely on one particular data model. So the browser is able to display data from a variety of different models.

GeoTrek is implemented as a Java Applet. This results in the following characteristics:

• The user needs a 'Java-enabled' Web browser installed on his machine, such as Netscape Navigator 3.01 or Microsoft Internet Explorer 3.02.
• No specific code is installed on the user's machine. The clients program is downloaded as part of the start-up of a working session.
• It works on the different types of computer and operating system for which a Java-enabled browser are available, including Unix, NT, Windows 95 and MacOS. System performance, however, is dependent on the reliability and performance of the Java components available in the operating system.

Back to top

Entering the Data Browser

GeoTrek provides a means to access distributed data from various data sources through a single point of entry with the following features:

• Find, select, view and manipulate data
• Query and select data from one or more data sources
• Launch various applications e.g. export to Excel, e-mail, etc.

The single point of entry is an Internet or Intranet browser like Netscape Navigator, Microsoft Explorer or Sun HotJava. Once a user has registered with the NGDRS, and clicks on the "Go to GeoTrek" button the GeoTrek banner window is the first thing that appears to the user. In 30 to 120 seconds the GeoTrek user interface window appears. Once the memory status bar turns from red to green the user can start interacting with the system. The various areas of this GeoTrek user interface window are described below.

Back to top

Selecting the Area of Interest (AOI)

When GeoTrek is invoked, a map showing the Gulf of Mexico and the adjacent states is displayed. If only a particular geographical area or state is required, the user should select the AOI from the map view by drawing a box that outlines the desired AOI. This will minimize the use of computer memory and will help performance. To set a new AOI the user has two major options:

1. Select the Zoom-In button and draw a bounding box on the map view. Once the desired AOI is displayed in the map view, user should select the pull-down menu View, followed by Area of Interest, followed by Set Area of Interest. At this time the Area of Interest window will display the coordinates of the corners selected by the user. The user can now choose the option By Viewing Extent and click Okay to set the new AOI boundaries.
   
   
2. Select the pull-down menu View, followed by Area of Interest, followed by Set Area of Interest. Now select the option by By Name and the system will display a list of pre-set states and areas. By clicking in the desired name the system will load the pre-set coordinates automatically. At this time the Area of Interest window will display the coordinates of the corners selected by the user. The user can now choose the option By Viewing Extent and click Okay to set the new AOI boundaries.
   
   
3. Next the user goes to the select data sources to add or remove those data sources that fall within the current AOI. If the user requires access to data sources outside the AOI, the user can also do so, but the data in the data sources selected are not displayed on the map. Each time a change is made, the map view is automatically updated, but the Refresh button can be used to display the data in the preferred order at any time. Another method for choosing the AOI is to select a data source (By Source). Each data source has a geographical bounding box, so by selecting a data source the AOI is displayed in the map view. The addition or removal of other data sources is the same as for selecting a new AOI or an existing AOI.

Back to top

Viewing the Data; Tiles and Data Counts

Once the data sources are selected and the AOI is chosen the data are displayed on the map panel or in text form. A check box next to each data source needs to be checked before the data is activated for viewing on the map or is available to the Text, Drop/Stop or Query functions.

Depending on the AOI selected the system may or may not display the data immediately. At high levels of magnification the system displays tiled counts of data, such as number of wells. This is done to help users manage dynamically the computer memory space available to them. At high levels of magnification, such as for example, when looking at the whole GOM, a data source such as the MMS Borehole will display the "borehole_counts" data set. This data set is automatically created by the system to alert the user that he/she is requesting too much data (in this example about 35,000 wellbores). The "clutter" at this zooming magnification is unavoidable due to the limitations in the font size display capabilities. If the user zooms-in to a smaller area, numbers (data counts) will be displayed. The numbers are automatically generated tiles of information. For this data set, the numbers provide the user with a general sense of the number of wellbores for this region of the GOM. If the user further zooms-in the system will (ultimately) display the data itself in the form of small circles representing the wells. Data tiling in the on-shore areas is done by county.

Once the data is activated and displayed, it is furthered selected from the map view or from the table. Individual wells, seismic lines, cores and other business objects can be selected in two ways: first, individually by pointing to them with the mouse one object at a time, or second by selecting them as a group of wells, seismic lines and other objects by drawing/dragging a selection box around the objects to be chosen. As the object(s) is selected it changes its original color to the red color. The individual and group of objects selected works as a toggle, so de-selection is a matter of reversing the selection process. The map and the table are interconnected, so when, for example a well is selected on a map it is highlighted on the table and vice-versa.

Two vertical tabs (titled "Map" and "Info") can be toggled to allow users to have a larger area of map to work or to be able to select more data types. The button "Blocks" can be toggled to display or not the MMS block names/numbers.

Back to top

Organizing the Data

For those data that are in a format that can be displayed in rows and columns the Text button is used to display the table on the screen. Once the data is displayed the data can be organized in several different ways.

• Data is selected by pointing to a particular row and clicking the mouse. The table and the map are coupled where coordinates exists in the data source, so that an action taken on the table also takes place on the map view and vice versa. This is needed when selecting data from a data source with a large number of records. All of the data may be selected by using Select All in the pull-down menu. The data may be de-selected by using the Unselect All pull-down menu option. Once data is selected it is brought to the table for further selection if required by using Select To Top.
• Data may be queried by using the Query button. The query provides a search mechanism that is used for finding and filtering data within a data source by selecting columns from the data source. The search is limited to the map area, the current selection or to the entire data source.
• An ascending or descending sort is possible at any time on a single column by pointing to the top of a column and clicking the mouse. This is needed when looking for specific types of data e.g. where wildcat and development are two column headings. The user need only to click on the column title and the column is sorted. There is also a more extensive sort capability that provides a multiple column sorts. This feature appears under Sort pull-down menu option. There is also the need for a Re-sort feature that provides a resort by using the sort criteria at is selected at the current time. This saves time if multiple sorts are required.
• Once a data is selected, the remaining data can be hidden by using Hide Unselected option. The hidden data is brought back by selecting the Expose Hidden. If eliminating the hidden text is required user must use the Drop Hidden option and the hidden data is dropped. Once the data is dropped, it is no longer exposed by Expose Hidden. However, all the data should be able to be brought back by using the Re-acquire option.
• Another available feature for selecting data is the Columns option available under the View pull-down menu. Because in many instances not all the data available is of interest to the user, the Columns option provides a technique to select the columns of interest and eliminate the others.
• Drill Down is used to select data in a data set at lower levels of detail. Note that this option will only be displayed if the data set is implemented using multiple physical tables. Refer to section About the Datasets for a description of what data sets are implemented using more than one table. An example is the selection of a data source with well information. Once the wells of interest are selected, then Drill Down maybe used to find out more detailed information on wellbores, for example. Further drilling down in the wellbores allows the user to find, for example, what well logs were run, the drilling depth, the mud weights and other detailed data. This, in many cases, is required to support a data models (such as the POSC Epicentre) where a business entity is commonly described in many levels and linked via multiple relationships.

Back to top

Exporting Data

After making a data selection, the data can be exported to an MS Excel spreadsheet. To export the selected data to Excel the user should select (in the text table window) the pull-down menu File followed by the Export All or Export Selection. GeoTrek spawns a task that initiates Excel, transfers the data automatically to Excel, and allows user to further manipulate the data in Excel and put in the form of graphs, charts, etc. Once the user is through using Excel, by clicking out of Excel, GeoTrek returns to the same screen or window being used by the user.

Back to top

Requesting Data

The Metadata Catalog/GeoTrek system provides special functionality for users to request seismic data and well log data from commercial vendors. The detailed steps for the procedures to order these data types are described in other tutorials on this site. It is likely these procedures will evolve in order to be as simple and responsive as possible to the user needs.

In general once the data selection and organization are completed, as described above, the user will need to invoke special "markup routines" that allow the system to derive automatically the boundaries of the data set needed by the user. The buyer (user) can interactively find, browse, view, evaluate, select, and finally request the data. GeoTrek collects sufficient detail to prepare an e-mail message that is sent to the seller (commercial data provider) requesting the data or requesting to be contacted about how to get the data. Pricing, invoicing, and shipping details are the responsibility of the data owner and are not part of the system.

Back to top