Geoscience Technologies

What is the Geoscience Technologies activity?

The British Geological Survey's Geoscience Technologies Programme will develop the tools needed to map, measure, monitor and model the geological environment.

See related story on LWEC website.

The tools will be applied to understand and manage environmental issues such as as groundwater, energy, minerals and the land as a resource; geological hazards such as landslides, subsidence, earthquakes, volcanoes and the geological aspects of flooding and management of waste materials, pollutants and the impacts of climate change.

What tools will be available?

The tools include

• digital mapping and field data capture technologies.
• virtual and augmented reality field environments.
• satellite, airborne and ground-based methods for observing the earth.
• systems that support the construction of 3D models of the sub-surface and the earth's physical and chemical properties.
• systems that use mathematical modelling to understand how geological processes operate and forecast their impacts.

How to get hold of the tools

The tools and systems will be made available by  

- open source releases
- free model viewers
- commercial sales of professional systems with industry partners.

Expected outputs

1. New geoscience remote sensing methods and datasets.
2. Implementation of current digital field data capture tools and development of next generation system.
3. Version 2 of GeoVisionary, a stereo immersive virtual field reconnaisance system.
4. Development of a first Distributed Intelligent Sensor Network and SMART monitoring concept.
5. Extended application of ALERT technology to deep geologic systems e.g. carbon capture and storage.
6. Development of geophysical monitoring for landslide processes and failure mechanisms.
7. Development and maintanence of GSI3D geological framework modelling and other modelling systems www.gsi3d.org.uk
8. Creation of geological models for educational purposes.
9. Applications and further development of the ZOOM groundwater modelling system.
10. Applications and further development of the PropBase geological property modelling system.  

Current and future free digital mapping outputs can be downloaded from here

Who will benefit?

Environment Agency, who make use of 3D models.
Defra, who are the UK lead department for two major earth Observation initiatives.
Railtrack and the Nucleur Decommisioning Authority will benefit from the monitoring technologies.
Emerging carbon capture and storage industry.
EC Minerals Technology Platform and the EC Raw Materials initiative.
Global Monitoring for Environment and Security and Group on Earth Observations initiatives. These have a large number of UK, European and International stakeholders in environment, space and UN Agencies and international science programmes.

PROGRAME FACTS AND FIGURES

Additional funder: EC Europa

Start and end dates: 1 April 2009 to 31 March 2014

Website: http://www.bgs.ac.uk/about/programmes/Spatial.html