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Data & Digitalisation Blog 4 : From Laboratory to Cloud: Digital Tools and Technologies in Geological Consultancy

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Making the Leap from the Laboratory to Cloud

In our last post, we talked about laying the essential groundwork and defining a detailed roadmap (essential steps for a successful digital transformation). Now, we turn our attention to the digital tools and technologies that will optimise our daily workflows and enhance collaboration between teams and clients. Whether we’re out on a real-time wellsite hitch or analysing well data back at the office, the appropriate technology empowers us to work more efficiently. Now we are ready to get hands-on with our digital transformation!

Key Digital Tools That Will Transform How We Do Business

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Digital tools are not simply advanced technologies; they are transformative resources that can streamline workflows, enhance data accuracy, and strengthen collaboration. Here are some of the essential tools and technologies PetroStrat uses:

  1. Data Collection Tools:
    The generation, collation and storage of accurate geological data is fundamental to PetroStrat’s underlying offerings and using the correct tools and associated data models is key to getting the best out each dataset. Our networked source software packages allow for data sharing during project work, making base data available from a single source to reduce errors and duplication. Using bespoke data pipelines, these tools are now connected to our cloud platform, PetroStrat Connect, making data sets accessible to everyone on the team, and crucially, to our multidisciplinary clients.
  2. Data Analysis and Visualisation Software:
    Analysing geological data involves a great deal of quantitative assessment. However, many of the insights drawn from this assessment are best delivered visually, in the form of geospatial maps, charts and scientific figures. Modern software, along with open-source languages and associated library’s provides excellent tools to deliver these insights, some of which we use are described below;
    • ArcGIS: A powerful GIS tool for mapping, spatial analysis, and data visualisation.
    • Leaflet: An open-source JavaScript library for interactive map rendering, designed to be accessed via any web-browser. Leaflet can be used as an online GIS tool, allowing users to turn layers on/off, connect map points to data etc. Incorporating this with R libraries allows users to visualise additional data alongside any online, interactive map.
    • R: For those who want to go deeper into data science, open-source languages such as R offer endless possibilities for custom analysis, machine learning, and statistical modelling. Coupled with excellent graphing and visualisation libraries, R (and other languages such as Python) provide an excellent way to interact with and interrogate datasets.

Jira and Dynamics: Project management tools that help teams track tasks, deadlines, and progress, ensuring projects stay on schedule.

Collaboration and Project Management Tools:
Digital transformation also improves the way in which we can work together. Collaboration tools can help keep everyone on the same page, no matter location. These tools allowed us to transition to a hybrid working model, supporting skill retention within our business.

Microsoft Teams: Great for instant messaging, video calls, and file sharing, keeping communication seamless and organised.

Real-Life Case Study: PetroStrat Connect

PetroStrat Connect is our new, cloud-based platform, designed to bring together multidisciplinary datasets and datatypes into one accessible place, making our data available for large and varied teams to interrogate, visualise and, ultimately, understand.

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In building this platform, we had to overcome a series of technical challenges, which meant getting the tooling correct was critical. Knowing we wanted a cloud-first approach meant we had a starting point – we had to move our data from our different source softwares and have it available within our cloud infrastructure. As a Microsoft first company, we opted to build in Azure, and leverage their partnership with Databricks to create a medallion architecture to land, clean and transform our datasets.

Once cleaned and available within our Azure infrastructure, we could then begin to build geologically focused visualisations of our data. Again, getting the tooling right was critical. Utililsing the Shiny web framework, we began to create a series of web-based interactive applications that rendered geospatial, log, images and stratigraphic data, connected directly to our cloud-hosted datasets.

When put together, this allows us to continue to collate our quantitative datasets in our trusted source software, but provide access to, and visualise, our datasets and interpretations via the web in near-real time. And, once again utilising Microsoft infrasture, we could secure all this behind Multifactor Authentication (MFA) and Row Level security.

Final Thoughts: Choosing the Right Tools for our Consultancy

There is no universal solution when it comes to digital tools. Our priority was to select those that align best with our specific needs, objectives, and budget. This process began with identifying the primary challenges in our current workflows, considering client needs, and seeking cost-effective tools tailored to address them directly. Ultimately, choosing the right tools has allowed us to build a new suite of products, which are cloud-first and will allow PetroStrat to evolve alongside our clients and competitors.

In part 5 of our Data & Digitalisation blogs, we’ll dive into how we are training the team and managing the changes that come with adopting lots of new technologies and their possibilities. Digital tools are only as good as the people who use them, so getting everyone up to speed is crucial. Stay tuned!


Blog series brought to you by Our Digital and Data Team (part of the New Ventures department)

mark weldon
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