AGOS Quarter 2 2014 Summary[1] - AuScope...

AGOS Milestone Report No 12 February 2014

AuScope Limited Australian Geophysical Observing System

AGOS Progress Quarter 2 2014

At the conclusion of Quarter 2 2014 (31 December 2013), most planned milestones had been reached in line with the AGOS Agreement. However some delays are being experienced. Construction of the 4 remote CORS GNSS sites is behind schedule although 2 sites are now complete with work in progress on the remaining 2 sites. Subsurface access projects remain behind schedule and progress is being closely monitored. The new Ocean Bottom Seismometer equipment has been delivered to Canberra from the UK however critical testing of the equipment has been delayed because of the unavailability of the research vessel operated by the Marine National Facility. This will require a revised testing plan to be implemented. Otherwise, all equipment and physical infrastructure for the AGOS infrastructure has now been acquired and deployments by end-‐user research groups are underway in several regions in Australia and New Zealand.

The Earth Sounding Network

All components of the project are now complete, with the exception of the Ocean Bottom Seismometer (OBS) pool.

The Earth Data recorders, which became field ready in December 2012, continue to be heavily utilised in Australia and New Zealand.

Construction of the entire pool (200 instruments) of the new generation seismic data loggers was completed on schedule in 2013.The equipment is now ready for deployment and by the end of March 2014, they will form the backbone of two new arrays in northern NSW/southern Queensland and one in Western Australia.

All 20 OBS units have been shipped to Canberra from the UK. The test deployment originally planned to take place in November/December 2013 to test the first 12 and a second cruise, administered by the Marine National Facility to take place in February/March 2014 to test the remaining 8 instruments has had to be rescheduled. This has occurred due to the unavailability of the MNF ship which is still undergoing testing in Singapore prior to deployment to Australia. The revised plan is to test in March on the NW Shelf with a Guralp-‐supplied specialist with the result that this process will be both more difficult and costly than expected. Following successful testing, all 20 OBS units should be field-‐ready.

As reported last quarter 50 new Trillium Compact seismometers are ready for use and will be deployed in one of the Queensland arrays and one of the Western Australian arrays.



The Geohistory Laboratory

Establishment of the Gehistory Laboratory is essentially complete. No further infrastructure expenditure has been undertaken on the Melbourne University node or the Curtin node of the laboratory. Inter-‐node calibration experiments between the Melbourne and Curtin have continued. The possibility of a Ministerial launch of the facility is being investigated. The Subsurface Observatory

The Subsurface Observatory petrophysics laboratory continues to run at capacity. As a result of some new building works in the Melbourne School of Earth Sciences, the Petrophysics laboratory will be moved in the next quarter and therefore some preparatory work has been undertaken to facilitate this. As a result of the move the lab will only be out of commission for a period of one week.

In addition to the more traditional applications of the equipment, this quarter has seen AGOS thermal conductivity equipment used to measure the insulation properties of balsa wood, a fast growing tree species in PNG and one that may be used, with Australian support, to co-‐develop a new industry for local communities in that region.

The SOB Access projects are well underway and a number of new submissions for a series of modest projects in Vic, NSW and SA have been received over the last two months.

The Distributed Temperature Sensor deployed in the Loy Yang 1 well in Gippsland has been gathering data over the last three months and this data is now being processed prior to release to the public.

The Inversion Laboratory

At ANU, four key pieces of inversion code for the iLab were released during the Quarter (Redback, Surface Wave Dispersion, Receiver Function and Tomography).

Progress at UQ includes: • release of an escript inversion package with

bug fixing and documentation • implementation of 2D MT forward modelling

application • preliminary work on 2D waveform inversion

In relation to the Terrawulf operations, all of the TII/ TIII compute servers are operating and users are



routinely running production code on the cluster. The cluster has been running at an average 60% capacity with peaks above 80%. This usage is up slightly from last Quarter despite some system shutdowns. The Geospatial Observatory

The deployable GNSS instrument pool remains operational. GA, ANU, UNSW, UTAS and the Australian Antarctic Division currently have AGOS supported research projects underway.

The AGOS GNSS CORS build (4 sites) is ongoing. Both the WA site and King Island sites are fully operational. Contracts for the civil construction of the remaining two sites in SA and Queensland are being developed. Completion of the CORS build program is forecast to be by the end of June.

The Robotic GNSS Calibration Facility is fully operational and a number of antennae have been calibrated. Work with industry partner Locata, has commenced and the facility is supporting their technology development program. Locata is an Australia company specialising in indoor and mine site positioning systems.

A prototype radar reflector array has been built and deployed at Gunning near Canberra. Four space agencies are tasking their radar satellites to observe the array. The reflectors are being tested with the ultimate aim of improving sensor calibrations. Once this testing is complete in March the reflectors will deployed to the Surat Basin, Queensland, to support the measurement of subsidence in Coal Seam Gas extraction areas. Contracts to build this infrastructure in Queensland are in the tender process. GA has continued to employ a dedicated project manager to deliver this project after the Queensland Government was unable to participate.

The Geophysical Education Observatory

This quarter the Australian Seismometers in Schools Network has almost completed the installation phase of the network. There are now 39 instruments installed in schools and installation is complete in WA, SA, VIC and Queensland. One instrument still remains unassigned for the Alice Springs or Tennant Creek area and consideration is being given to install this instrument in a primary school. Focus has now turned to keeping schools engaged with the program and maintaining data flow and connectivity. A major highlight of this quarter has been the Australian Seismometers in Schools success in the Australian Innovation Challenge, winning the education category.

GPS in Schools program processing in Tasmania and ACT. Both Jurisdictions have commenced working with schools to identify requirements and are undertaking planning. Difficulties working with the other jurisdictions have emerged with a reluctance to sign agreements. Contingency



planning has commenced to ensure the success of the program. This will involve targeting those jurisdictions who are willing to work on the program with proposals for additional stations. The University of Tasmania (UTAS) has agreed to provide educational material explaining the program which will be targeted to high school students. This component will be completed in February 2014. Project Milestones The status of project milestones is shown in the table below. Note that milestones shown incomplete in earlier Quarters are included below to show that progress has been made.

No. Milestone Projected completion Date

Status

Milestones to 30 September 2013 (reported not complete in earlier Reports)

43

Geospatial Observatory: 4 new permanent GNSS CORS stations installed

30 June 2013 2 sites complete and operational with planning for the two remaining sites progressing well and scheduled for completion by end June 2014.

59

Geospatial Observatory: GNSS and radar reflector arrays designed and installed (first 50%)

30 September 2013 Radar reflector design complete; prototype built and undergoing testing on a site near Canberra prior to deployment in Qld. Testing will now be completed in March 2014 to allow rigorous testing by 4 space agencies prior to deployment.

60

Subsurface Observatory: Third stage sites selected

30 September 2013 70% complete. Delays in research consortia finalising access requirements necessitates a review of the status of this milestone.

Indicative Milestones to 31 December 2013

63

Inversion Laboratory: Integration of inversion capability into Escript prototype released

31 December 2013 50% complete. Delayed to December 2014 because the AGOS inversion tools based on escript are to be integrated into the escript distribution as a package and are distributed with escript releases rather than prototypes.

64 Geophysical Education Observatory: Remaining seismometer pool purchased

31 December 2013 Complete

65 Subsurface Observatory: Second stage completed

31 December 2013 This milestone is 60% complete. Delays relate largely to delays experienced by the 3rd party



research groups in specifying and finalising subsurface research activities that require access funding. The matter has been flagged with DoE for further discussion and resolution.

66 Milestone Report 12 31 December 2013 Complete for internal

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AGOS Quarter 2 2014 Summary[1] - AuScope...

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