In GIS terminology a ‘mask’ is a spatial layer that one uses to limit the ‘view’ of a region. For example, if you were looking at the geology of the North Sea region, but only really interested in the marine environment you might employ a ‘land mask’. This would be a polygon that lies on…
Read detailsI was very interested by a recent blog by David Bamford on the subject of behavioural economics. The bottom line is that buyers of technology are fickle and not altogether objective when it comes to buying new technology, for a variety of very human reasons: Benefits are only realised sometime in the future Benefits are…
Read detailsInternational oil and gas companies are presented with so many exploration opportunities that they cannot all be actively pursued. In order to decide where to commit resources the exploration opportunities need to be analysed and ranked (preferably as quickly as possible), based upon the quality of each opportunity and the risks (geologic, engineering and economic) associated…
Read detailsUnconventional Gas The interest in unconventional gas exploration has significantly grown over the last decade following advances in drilling technology and exploration methods for monitoring and extracting unconventional gas [1,2,3]. Shale Gas has now become a target for new exploration and exploitation. Recent articles indicate the increase in the amount of Shale Gas plays that…
Read detailsWe sometimes find datasets containing attribute data that we can’t use effectively because the data is not stored correctly. A common example is a field containing dates where the field type is defined as ‘Text’. This results in difficulties filtering the dataset by date, e.g. “display data older than X”. In this petroleum GIS tip we take the common…
Read detailsThe UK government launched its 26th offshore oil and gas licensing round last week. The round includes new “Frontier” licences, with an extended nine-year exploration term, as well as some new tax breaks to stimulate activity. Blocks are being offered in all UK territorial waters for the first time in 12 years. It’s a massive…
Read detailsWith 48 toolbars at version 9.3.1 ArcGIS Desktop has a lot of hidden functionality that many users may be unaware of. One such toolbar is the Animation toolbar which allows you to animate data to help identify spatial trends through time. The functionality is not obvious at first but ArcGIS Desktop’s integrated Help covers animation in…
Read detailsIn part 1 of “How big is your training gain?”, I provided a simple spreadsheet model that readers could have a play with and visualise their potential training gain. Well how did it go? In part 2 I’d like to present and discuss a couple scenarios that I came up with. Scenario Modelling Scenario 1 –…
Read detailsAs if running a GIS business wasn’t hard enough work, I recently signed up for a part-time MSc course, run by UNIGIS. One of the fun things about a course like this is that it takes you in to areas you wouldn’t normally venture. One of the exercises I’ve just completed was to identify potential landfill…
Read detailsAttribute Domains for ArcGIS File Geodatabases are arguably the most important data quality tool for geoscientists creating play fairway mapping data. As such we thought it would be useful if the next in our series of GIS Tips explained how to use them. There are probably three types of ArcGIS users reading this: Users that already understand…
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