AGOS  Milestone  Report  No  13  May  2014  

 

 AuScope  Limited     Australian  Geophysical  Observing  System  

 

AGOS  Progress  Quarter  3  2014    

At  the  conclusion  of  Quarter  3  2014  (31  March  2014),  most  planned  milestones  had  been  reached  in  line  with  the  AGOS  Agreement.    Good  progress  is  being  made  to  erode  previously  reported  delays.  Only  one  of  the  planned  remote  CORS  GNSS  sites  now  remains  to  be  completed  with  construction  underway.    Subsurface  access  projects  continue  behind  schedule  and  progress  is  being  closely  monitored.  The  new  Ocean  Bottom  Seismometer  (OBS)  equipment  is  being  tested  under  a  revised  and  more  costly  testing  plan,  which  has  begun  but  remains  behind  schedule.    Otherwise,  all  equipment  and  physical  infrastructure  originally  planned  for  the  AGOS  investment  has  been  acquired  and  deployments  by  end-­‐user  research  groups  are  underway.  

 

The  Earth  Sounding  Network    

All  construction  and  procurement  components  of  the  project  are  now  complete.    

During  this  quarter  a  major  new  broad-­‐band  experiment  representing  collaboration  between  GSWA,  UWA  and  Macquarie  University  has  been  started  in  the  Capricorn  Orogen  of  Western  Australia  using  36  Earth-­‐data  recorders.    

AGOS  electric  and  magnetic  MT  field  instruments  are  currently  deployed  in  a  major  geophysical  monitoring  experiment  in  Queensland  for  a  coal  seam  gas  program.  

The  first  trials  of  the  OBS  units  were  undertaken  off  the  NW  Shelf  with  support  from  Woodside  Petroleum.  Tests  in  shallow  water  identified  a  problem  with  the  release  springs  and  in  the  absence  of  spares  from  the  manufacturer,  only  8  units  were  tested  in  deep  water  rather  than  the  12  planned.  Seven  instruments  were  recovered;  the  eighth  appeared  to  release  but  did  not  reach  the  surface  in  a  27  hour  search  period.  Under  the  terms  of  the  contract,  the  manufacturer,  Guralp,  will  replace  the  lost  unit.  Despite  this  incident,  good  data  was  recorded  on  the  OBS  out  to  33  km  range  from  the  Woodside                          One  of  the  AGOS  OBS  Fleet  of  20  instruments  seismic  survey  vessel.                                                          

The  Geohistory  Laboratory  

Establishment  of  the  Geohistory  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.    

AGOS  Milestone  Report  No  13  May  2014  

 

 AuScope  Limited     Australian  Geophysical  Observing  System  

 The  Subsurface  Observatory    

The  Subsurface  Observatory  petrophysics  laboratory  has  moved  into  a  new  space  during  this  quarter  in  order  to  facilitate  some  required  building  renovations  at  the  University  of  Melbourne.    This  has  resulted  in  the  facility  getting  a  newer,  larger  and  better  suited  space  for  it  operations.    During  the  move  to  the  new  space  the  petrophysics  lab  was  offline  for  a  period  of  about  2  weeks  but  it  is  operating  again  now.  

Access  projects  are  now  well  underway    with  three  major  drilling  and  logging    programs  currently  in  progress.                                          New  Petrophysics  Lab  at  University  of  Melbourne  

A  request  to  utilise  unspent  project  funds  to  acquire  supplementary  subsurface  equipment  including  tilt  meters,  seismometers  and  flux  monitors  has  been  submitted  to  the  Commonwealth  following  Board  approval  last  March.  

 

The  Inversion  Laboratory  

The  major  event  for  the  quarter  was  the  launch  of  the  iLab  software  portal.  The  iLab  project  is  intended  to  make  advanced  inference  and  data  analysis  software  available  to  the  geophysical  community.  The  website  provides  a  portal  for  researchers  to  share  their  software.  There  are  currently  seven  codes  available  through  the  portal  (http://www.iearth.org.au/codes/)  with  a  further  12  software  packages  lined  up  to  be  included  prior  to  the  completion  of  the  project.        This  includes  both  inversion  codes  and  some                  Red  dots  show  the  locations  of  registered  iLab    specific  applications  of  inversion.                  users.    At  UQ  node  work  continued  on  the  main  objective  to  develop  a  software  facility  for  inversion  of  geophysical  data  sets  focused  on  large  scale  seamless  integration  of  different  physics  and  joint  inversion.  During  the  last  quarter    

• inversion  tool  kit  has  been  installed  on  NCI  facility  and  benchmarked  showing  scalability  up  to  8000  cores.  

• improvements  were  made  on  software  testing  and  delivery.  • a  2D  Transverse  Electric  MT  forward  model  was  implemented  in  escript  and  tested  against  

benchmark  solutions.  • implementation  of  2D  MT  code  for  the  Transverse  Magnetic  MT  mode  was  started.  • work  progressed  on  2D  waveform  inversion.  

 

AGOS  Milestone  Report  No  13  May  2014  

 

 AuScope  Limited     Australian  Geophysical  Observing  System  

 The  Geospatial  Observatory  

The  GNSS  instrument  pool  remains  operational.    GA,  ANU,  UNSW,  UTAS  and  the  Australian  Antarctic  Division  currently  have  AGOS  supported  research  projects  underway  with  equipment  being  using  across  Australia,  Indonesia  and  Antarctica.  

The  AGOS  GNSS  CORS  build  (4  sites)  is  almost  complete.    The  WA,  Tasmania  and  Queensland  CORS  stations  are  fully  operational.  Civil  construction  for  remaining  site  in  SA  is  now  complete  and  instrumentation  will  be  installed  in  May  2014  -­‐  completing  the  AGOS  CORS  build  program.  

The  radar  reflector  array  at  Gunning  near  Canberra  (shown  in  picture)  has  been  imaged  by  four  space  agencies.  The  reflectors  are  being  tested  with  the  ultimate  aim  of  improving  radar  sensor  calibrations.  Specific  work  with  the  Italian  Space  Agency  is  continuing  after  issues  with  radar  data  from  the  COSMO  Sky  MED  satellite  were  identified  using  the  AGOS  Gunning  reflectors.  

The  Gunning  experiment  will  now  conclude  and  the  radar  reflectors  will  be  deployed  to  the  Surat  Basin,  Queensland.  Work  in  the  Surat  Basin  will  support  the  measurement  of  subsidence  in  Coal  Seam  Gas  extractions  areas.    Tenders  to  build  this  infrastructure  in  Queensland  have  been  finalised  with  civil  work  to  commence  in  the  coming  quarter.  

Tenders  to  build  a  survey  ground  mark  infrastructure  in  the  Surat  and  Galilee  Basins  have  been  finalised  with  civil  work  to  commence  in  the  coming  quarter.  Land  access  issues  are  progressively  being  resolved  after  successful  negotiations  with  aboriginal  and  rural  land  owners  in  the  areas  of  interest.  

 

The  Geophysical  Education  Observatory  

This  quarter  the  Australian  Seismometers  in  Schools  Network  is  in  the  final  stages  of  installation  of  the  network  and  is  focusing  on  the  development  of  support  and  educational  materials.  40  Instruments  are  now  installed  in  schools  and  installation  is  complete  in  WA,  SA,  VIC,  NSW  and  Queensland.  One  instrument  still  remains  unassigned  for  the  Alice  Springs  or  Tennant  Creek  area  and  a  primary  school  is  being  considered  for  this  instrument.  Work  continues  on  trying  to  improve  ways  of  maintaining  data  flow  and  connectivity.    A  major  highlight  was  the  installation  of                      Melrose  High  student  Charlotte  Anderson  explains    the  final  NSW  instrument  at  The  King’s                          AuSIS  to  Australia’s  Chief  Scientist  Professor  Ian  Chubb  School,  Parramatta.  It  was  installed  in  time            at  the  ACE  Science  Centre  Launch.  for  the  launch  of  their  new  Science  Centre.            

AGOS  Milestone  Report  No  13  May  2014  

 

 AuScope  Limited     Australian  Geophysical  Observing  System  

The  GPS  in  Schools  program  is  progressing  in  Tasmania,  ACT,  NSW,  Victoria  and  Queensland.  All  Jurisdictions  have  commenced  working  with  schools  to  identify  requirements  and  are  undertaking  planning.  The  first  GPS  in  Schools  station  has  been  installed  in  the  ACT.    A  strong  partnership  has  been  developed  with  the  University  of  Tasmania  (UTAS)  who  has  provided  draft  educational  material  that  is  targeted  to  high  school  students  explaining  the  program.  Work  with  the  Department  of  Education,  Tasmania,  is  continuing  to  refine  this  material.      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  31  December  2013  (reported  not  complete  in  earlier  Reports)

43  

Geospatial  Observatory:  4  new  permanent  GNSS  CORS  stations  installed  

30  June  2013   3  sites  complete  and  Civil  construction  for  remaining  site  in  SA  is  now  complete  with  instrumentation  to  be  installed  in  May  2014  -­‐  completing  the  CORS  build  program  scheduled  for  completion  by  end  June  2014.  

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

30  September  2013   Complete  

60  

Subsurface  Observatory:  Third  stage  sites  selected  (Third  Stage  Sites  refers  to  Borehole  Seismology  sites  and  associated  Borehole  Logging    Data  Access  Infrastructure)  

30  September  2013   75%  complete.  Final  borehole  seismometry  access  project  planned  for  completion  by  September  2014.  

63  

Inversion  Laboratory:  Integration  of  inversion  capability  into  Escript  prototype  released  

31  December  2013   60%  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  40  school  sites  installed  

65  Subsurface  Observatory:  Second  stage  completed  

(second  stage  refers  to  Borehole  

31  December  2013   This  milestone  is  65%  complete.  Delays  relate  largely  to  delays  experienced  by  the  3rd  party  

AGOS  Milestone  Report  No  13  May  2014  

 

 AuScope  Limited     Australian  Geophysical  Observing  System  

Logging  Toolkit  &  Borehole  Logging    Data  Access  Infrastructure)  

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.  Planned  completion  revised  to  October  2014    

Milestones  to  31  March  2014  

67  

Geospatial  Observatory:  Remote  sensing  web  portal  developed  

31  March  2014   Complete  Approval  sought  for  new  data,  additional  to  the  original  plan,  to  be  purchased  and  included    

68  

Subsurface  Observatory:  Third  stage  logging  pool  procured  

31  March  2014   All  planned  procurements  complete.  Approval  sought  for  supplementary  equipment,  additional  to  original  plan,  to  be  purchased.  

69  Milestone  Report  13   31  March  2014   Complete  for  internal  

distribution