Benefits of rapid data assessment and visualization prove themselves in exploration scenarios

Use of mapping and visualization software is growing rapidly in exploration. Carmel Burns of Canadian company Geosoft, provider of geospatial solutions to earth science industries, describes how some of its customers are adapting to the possibilities. The ability to effectively display, rapidly assess and dynamically experiment with multiple datasets has helped to reduce risk and increase prospecting capabilities in exploration. Increasingly, what’s required in exploration is software that can handle large volumes of data and multiple data sources and data types, such as geophysical data, geochemical data, drillhole data, satellite imagery, GIS data and any kind of mapping data, within one single environment or transparently linked environments. Utilizing today’s visualization tools, geoscientists are able to reduce risk and increase understanding by looking at as much different data as they can, in as many different ways as they can, within compressed project time frames. Despite the fact that exploration companies are leaner, with fewer people and shorter project time frames, Dr Michal Ruder, principal of US-based Wintermoon Geotechnologies, says she has seen exponential improvements in productivity and data quality as a result of new software for mapping and visualization. Whereas it used to take weeks to process and interpret geoscience datasets, today it is not uncommon for geoscientists to address the salient issues of interpretations in the course of one or two days. ‘I can remember doing batch maps in paper copies back in the 1980s,’ says Dr Ruder. ‘Since then, the ability to image geoscientific datasets on a computer screen in realtime and continual improvements in visualization software have had an amazing impact on what we can do as geoscientists, and how quickly we can do it.’ Interpretation results are also more accurate because geoscientists have the tools to view the quality of the data in every single phase, from initial data processing and quality control through to visualization, integration and the final interpretations.