Geographic Information System (GIS)

A key deliverable of any marine survey is the spatial data. Traditionally data was delivered as paper charts, then as layers in a CAD files such as AutoCAD. In recent years, the offshore industry has largely standardised on a GIS schema, now a rigid set of layer names and field names, which has made a tremendous improvement in data portability. So that when the client specifies an SSDM, the contractor inherently understand where to place his data. Designed Survey lines are placed in the Proposed Survey Lines layer, Depth contours are placed in the contours layer etc. It sounds easy now, but just a few short years ago this was very poorly coordinated.

The SSDM working group at OGP are the engine room behind this effort, and it has already saved million of dollars in translation and conversion time. Guardian are proud to have a team member on the SSDM task force, who drives this standard ever further forward towards improved efficiency, robustness and open source. As part of that contribution, we have become very familiar with the SSDM, how it works and how to use it.