The GIGS Ex-com under the auspices of the OGP has produced a series of guidelines to assist companies in determining the integrity with how geo-science software handles geo-spatial data contained therein.
The published guidelines deal with many areas of how the software should treat geo-spatial data and these include:
- Definition of pre-defined geodetic parameters supplied by the company. Examining the parameters associated with 2D geographical and 2D projected CRS that include the definitions of: Units of measure, reference ellipsoids, prime meridians, geodetic datums, geodetic CRS’, datum transformations, map projections, projected CRS’, vertical datums and vertical CRS’.
- User-defined geodetic parameters. Examining the ease with which new geodetic parameters can be added to the application. Where the current geodetic database does not cater for a specific CRS or other definition how easy is it for the user to add a new system to the application?
- Coordinate system axes. This section examined the labelling and definition associated with coordinate systems recognised by the application and their compliance to international standards (e.g. ISO / EPSG).
- Data operations. The data operations section is divided into five sub-categories and examines the way in which the application recognises and treats geo-spatial data. The five sub-categories examined:
- Coordinate conversions between geographical and projected CRS referenced to the same datum.
- Coordinate transformations between CRS referenced to different datums.
- Import and export of 2D seismic lines.
- Import and export of 3D seismic bin grids
- Import and export of well data.
- Audit trail. This section examined the way in which operations performed upon the asset data were internally tracked by the application and the visibility to users. When operations performed upon the data impacted changes or modifications to the data set how is it possible to examine the flow of operations, by whom and when.
- Deprecation. The examined how applications handled the deprecation of a CRS.
- Warning messages. The section examined what warning messages were issued to the users of the application to highlight when potential problems were identified, e.g. incorrect CRS selection or other geodetic syntax rules being compromised.
