“Today, acquisitions and fast growth in the gathering industry are forcing operators to develop a data strategy and look deeper at all aspects of their pipeline asset data – from how it is collected, to making it available to decision makers,” said Victoria Skogman, is the conference manager. “Currently, gathering systems are unregulated, but trends in the industry show this is likely to change in the future. Preparing for this impending change is crucial, hence the theme of the conference.”

The goal of the GeoGathering Conference is to provide valuable information to gathering system and upstream operators who want to create efficient, accurate, and collaborative data strategies that work for their organizations. Presenters will demonstrate how GIS technology allows attendees to collect and share data between the field and the office, enabling their organization to make well-informed decisions. The versatile agenda focuses on real-world experiences — everything from integrity management and data requirements to data security and making GIS technology more accessible to stakeholders, Skogman said.

The GeoGathering Conference committee estimates that close to 150 GIS professionals and top-level management from leading oil and gas companies will attend this year. Attendees will be able to attend sessions that include:

• Developing a Data Strategy
• Data Collection Methods to Meet Requirements
• Data Security and the Cloud
• Data Sharing: GIS as an Enterprise
• Organizing Data for Decision-Makers
• PHMSA MAOP Strategies
• Web-enabled Data Sharing Technologies & Portals
• Collecting & Sharing Data to Enhance Safety

This year, attendees will experience the new, audience-focused format that offers two simultaneous tracks giving attendees the chance to tailor their own conference schedule. Plus, two of the biggest improvements are the addition of “structured networking” sessions and a “GIS Think Tank.”

Structured Networking facilitates a small group setting, in which attendees have the opportunity to meet people with common interests, share practical ideas, and network with individuals who might possibly help your organization. When attendees leave the networking session, they will have a solid list of new business contacts, Skogman said. The networking sessions are strategically placed at the beginning of the conference to help you build new relationships over the duration of the conference.

The GIS Think Tank session is also a unique addition to the agenda. It will feature five to seven GIS managers from a variety of gathering operators around the country. This is not a typical Q&A panel session; instead, it will allow the participating GIS managers to converse among themselves as the audience listens in. This will be mostly an unstructured session so that managers can spend more or less time on topics as they choose, Skogman said. It will be facilitated with questions from the audience. The purpose is to lead an informal discussion on some of the successes that each manager has had along with their opinions on pressing issues that gathering operators are facing.

This year’s conference has a seven-person steering committee with pipeline gathering background. Members include Trisha Menasco of DCP Midstream, Tom Coolidge of Esri, Ellen Nodwell of Hess, Cameron Collins of Williams, Rob McElroy of McElroy Consulting, Ron Brush of New Century Software and Victoria Skogman of New Century Software.

“The conference topics are very timely,” said Menasco. “Just when I thought I had all the data requirements figured out, it feels like we are starting over. I look forward to helping build an agenda that will be useful to the gathering community.”

Early bird registration is open. The conference committee welcomes senior management, project managers, integrity management specialists, GIS professionals, field operations managers, regulatory compliance personnel, and engineers.

Using the MR-1 receiver and Topcon’s MG-A8 antenna, the system provides “centimeter-accurate RTK positioning and better than 1/10 of a degree heading accuracy in challenging environments,” said Doug Langen, TPS GNSS product manager. “The rugged MR-1 receiver is water and dustproof and operates at a robust operational temperature range of -40°C to 75°C.”

When combined with Topcon’s Quartz Lock Loop technology, the MR-1 offers continuous operation during “extreme vibration and shock, typical of intense dynamic environments,” he said.

The MG-A8 antenna of the MR-1 Heading System is designed for moving platforms and provides multipath rejection. It also offers increased resistance to near-band interference from satellite communications systems commonly found in marine applications.

Additional information is available at www.topconoemsolutions.com.

Applanix has introduced the POS LV 120, the latest version of its positioning and orientation systems for land vehicles. Using commercial Micro-Electro-Mechanical (MEMS) inertial measurement unit (IMU) technology, the Applanix POS LV 120 is a small, lightweight system and provides an economical solution for any continuous positioning and orientation application.

POS LV 120 is a fully integrated, turnkey position and orientation system, using integrated inertial technology to generate stable, reliable and repeatable positioning solutions for land-based vehicle applications, Applanix said. Redesigned to be smaller and lighter, it maintains identical data interfaces and software compatibility with the established POS LV line of products.

“With a MEMS IMU and a 220 channel, dual-antenna GNSS receiver integrated into a single enclosure, the POS LV 120 is a cost-effective GNSS-Inertial solution designed to support many types of land-based mobile mapping projects,” said Kevin Andrews, product manager for Land Products at Applanix.  “The integrated system is smaller than the standard POS LV computer system (PCS), making it ideal for use in lightweight applications such as robotics, autonomous vehicles, centerline mapping, asset mapping and short-range direct georeferencing.”

POS LV 120 is available now through the Applanix sales network.

The Earth’s surface is constantly shifting, being deformed as earthquake faults accumulate strain, and slip or slowly creep over time. Not long ago, scientists relied solely on seismometers to monitor the earth’s movements. Today, GPS has taken prominence as an indispensible tool.

PANGA, the monitoring network covering the Pacific Northwest, uses GPS to monitor this movement by measuring the precise position (within 5 millimeters or less) of stations near active faults relative to each other. By determining how the stations have moved, ground deformation can be determined.

If the plates near the coast or the Cascade Mountains move even a few centimeters, the scientists at PANGA know within seconds. The network is still being built, but eventually it’s expected that PANGA will be able to sense earthquakes faster and more accurately than traditional seismometers, and issue alerts to warn citizens of impending activity.

“GPS is helpful in distinguishing magnitude 8 from M9 earthquakes quickly,” explained Rex Flake, PANGA. “By design, seismometers only record high-frequency energy that becomes saturated during strong ground motion. Moreover, seismic data ‘clip’ at high magnitudes whereas GPS become more accurate. Seismographs are mainly intended to detect very small to moderately large earthquakes. GPS gives actual ground motions that in theory could be incorporated very quickly into tsunami models and warning systems. That is one of the things we are working on now.”

Volcano Watch. “A more speculative application is that some (not all by any measure) large earthquakes are preceded by slow creep events,” said Andrew Miner, PANGA. “While not really good enough to predict an earthquake, I think if we saw a very large transient creep event it would at least ring alarm bells. Unfortunately though, earthquakes are by their nature just not very predictable, at least to the level of a day or week that people could reasonably act on. On the bright side, volcanoes are reasonably predictable, and GPS is also an important tool in monitoring them. We work with the Cascade Volcano Observatory on several monitoring projects.”

PANGA is one of a series of earthquake monitoring networks stretching along the West Coast. The Pacific Northwest Geodetic Array is run by the PANGA Geodesy Laboratory at Central Washington University (CWU) in Ellensburg, and  includes 300 continuously operating, high-precision GPS receivers located throughout the Pacific Northwest. Sixty more stations are expected to be installed this year. Trimble, Leica, Topcon, and Javad are the main receivers used in the region.

Data from these receivers is continuously downloaded, analyzed, archived, and disseminated. About one third of PANGA’s GPS stations are telemetered in real-time back to CWU, where the data are processed using NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s GIPSY/OASIS II software for high-precision data analysis, and Trimble’s RTKNet Integrity Manager software for real-time analysis. The data provide relative positioning of several millimeters across the Cascadia subduction zone and its metropolitan regions. These real-time data are used to monitor and mitigate natural hazards arising from earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, landslides, and coastal sea-level hazards.

Sagging Bridges. The data are also used to monitor man-made structures such as Seattle’s sagging Alaska Way Viaduct, the State Route 520 and Interstate 90 floating bridges, and dams throughout the Cascadia subduction zone, including those along the Columbia River. For instance, for the S.R. 520 bridge, PANGA teamed up with Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT) to monitor movement of the 520 bridges during wind storms and seismic events.

The receivers continuously monitor and record structural deformation with about a millimeter precision. Raw GNSS satellite phase and pseudorange estimates are acquired and processed continuously into receiver positions estimated every 5 seconds and delivered with 10 and 30-second latencies. Daily-averaged receiver positions computed with predicted and post-processed satellite orbit and clock corrections are provided with 1-6 day latencies.

Seattle’s aging Alaska Way viaduct is one of several major man-made structures being monitored by PANGA’s GPS Network. (photos courtesty of CWU Geodesy Lab.)

Tremor Slips. The Northwest is at the forefront of earthquake-related GPS research, in large part because the area provides a lot to learn from GPS monitoring, Flake said. “For example, when we started it was strongly suspected but not definitely known that the Cascadia subduction zone was locked over parts of its surface and a major earthquake threat. Thanks to GPS monitoring we now have a pretty good idea not only exactly where it is locked, but also when parts of it do slip or creep.

“One important discovery made with GPS data, along this line, was that of the Episodic Tremor Slip (ETS) events that occur here in the Northwest U.S.,” Flake said. “Since the time duration of ETS motion takes place on the scale of days to weeks, these earthquake events were unrealized by traditional seismic detection methods.”

GPS data shed light on this peculiarly predictable earthquake phenomenon. “With these GPS data we can measure strain accumulation within the continental crust (where people live) and calculate the residual that can be expected to rebound in a large subduction zone earthquake,” Flake said.

“Even more detailed than that, we can use GPS data from past ETS events to constrain the locked zone of the subducting crustal plate by inferring the amount of slip at depth that best reproduces the observed GPS recordings — important in determining possible magnitude and location of the megathrust earthquakes (Mw = 8 to 9) that will someday occur. This is of obvious concern to society and is a major reason that we lead the geodetic applications of GPS research.”

Data Online. PANGA maintains a website that integrates daily GPS measurements from about 1,500 stations along the Pacific/North American plate boundary, ranging from Alaska to the U.S-Mexico border. Cleaned, network solutions from several arrays are merged and grouped into regional clusters.

Arrow on a Velocity Field Map of Oregon and Washington represent ground motion as measured by GPS at each particular location. The grey circles are 2 sigma error ellipses (click to enlarge.)

The PANGA team constructs a bedrock drill-brace geodetic monument at Howard Hanson Dam east of Auburn, Washington.