
Writing a data management plan: metadata - laboratory notebooks
A use case supplied by Dr Grant Nicoll
This research involves the use of seismic data acquired by the University of Edinburgh from the British Geological Survey (and previously worked on by them) – the current study requires this data to be interpreting in Petrel (a seismic interpretation package) to create a set of surfaces – these will then be used to create a 3D layered grid model in MPath (a fluid flow modelling package) on which fluid flow modelling will be performed.
The researcher involved has not used either software package before although some training has been provided by the University – a brief handover of data has also been performed by a post-doctoral researcher who has previously worked on this data in MPath – they are about to leave the University for Canada to join the company that developed MPath. Seismic data is loaded into Petrel and correlated with well horizon depths and well logs from oil company reports but some horizons don’t match up.
What information would the researcher need to fix the problem?
Questions:
- Who worked on this data before and what did they do to it in terms of processing?
- Are there any records available of the processing steps undertaken – notes, logs, workflows? The researcher needs to know who did what and where everything (such as data, files, reports, workflows, and so on) can be found and that everything is up to date.
- Is there anyone else available in University of Edinburgh who has used either piece of software before to offer assistance?
- If there is a problem, how easy is it going to be to fix – are additional resources such as software or equipment likely to be required?