Events & Courses

Course overview

Marine engineering projects involving some form of interaction with, or penetration of, the seabed, are dependent on input from geoscience practitioners, working with acquired geophysical, geotechnical and well data, in order to optimise engineering design parameters and minimise project risk. Such projects vary in size and scale from location specific installations or investigations to windfarms covering many square miles of seabed, and the depth of interest may encompass any interval within the top 1,000m sub-seabed. The data used to interpret the geological and geotechnical characteristics of the shallow section vary immensely in how they are acquired, what information they are capable of recovering and the level of detail, or resolution, that they can achieve. Marine geoscience data imaging the sub-surface come in two main types: seismic data and well, borehole and CPT 'sample' or 'groundtruth' data.

There are fundamental differences between these two data families, rendering them at times difficult to reconcile or correlate but a thorough integration of both, i.e. a predictive geological model, is often the key outcome of a data interpretation project. The key obstacles to full integration are fundamental differences in resolution, both lateral and vertical, between the two data types; and the difference between the vertical units in which the data are recorded; the time/depth conversion problem. But whatever the scale of the project or whatever the depth of investigation, the workflows employed in order to interrogate, condition, interpret and ultimately integrate these disparate datasets, may operate across all depths of interest, all spectra of frequency content and all orders of resolution.

This course will deliver practical guidance on assessment of the quality and characteristics of the full range of seismic data, how it may be conditioned to aid interpretation, how velocity models are employed in time-depth conversion, and how acoustic impedance provides a common language facilitating the full integration of seismic and groundtruth data.

Learning objectives

1. Assessment, conditioning and manipulation of seismic data
2. Integration of seismic and groundtruth data through the medium of acoustic impedance
3. Concept of the integrated geological model

Programme

This course will be held virtually over two half-days on 4 and 5 March 2025, starting at 09:00 GMT and ending at approximately 13:30 GMT.

Speaker

Francis Buckley BSc FGS, CGeol Consultant Marine Geoscientist

Francis is a professionally qualified Chartered Geologist with 40 years' experience as a Geoscientist in the offshore energy, engineering and telecommunications sectors. Having graduated in geology from the University of Liverpool, and after a short spell mud-logging on North Sea exploration drilling rigs, he spent 20 years, both offshore and on, acquiring, interpreting and reporting on marine geoscientific data sources, for a full range of offshore engineering projects. In 2008 he joined Senergy Ltd. as its Principal Engineering Geoscientist, eventually becoming world-wide Technical Authority on engineering geoscience at Lloyds Register.

A specialist in marine engineering geoscientific data interpretation, he used site-survey and well data to advance radical ideas, since taken up by the academic community, on Early Pleistocene glacial episodes in the Central North Sea, and to question preconceptions on the later Pleistocene stratigraphy of the North Sea. This work was published in a series of peer-reviewed papers, and posters and presentations to international conference audiences. He also went on to develop advanced interpretation methods for site investigation purposes, borrowing techniques from exploration geoscience, including seismic attribute analysis, seismic inversion, AVO and petro-physical techniques incorporating well log, geotechnical borehole log and CPT data. Key to this initiative were investigations into how velocity and density data extracted from seismic processing, geotechnical boreholes and CPTs may be combined with inverted seismic data to build quantitative geological models, some aspects of which have been published in international journals. He currently lives on the Isle of Skye, conducting geoscience consultancy work for Cuillin Geoscience Ltd., and collaborating on a number of non-commercial projects with various academic institutions.

Location

This course will be delivered virtually via Zoom. Joining details will be sent out the day prior, alongside any course materials that may be needed.

Fees (including early-bird rate)

* Early-bird discount applicable for all registrations until 4 January 2025. Simply select your delegate type on the registration form and the discount will be applied and reflected in the payment section at the bottom of the registration form.*

Group Discounts

We offer competitive group discounts on all Training Courses:
5 – 9 delegates: 20% off
10 – 14 delegates: 25% off
15 delegates or more: 30% off

For more information on how to access the Group Discount, please email [email protected]

Concessions

We offer students a generous discount. Please verify your student status by either registering with your student email address, or uploading a photograph of your student identification/acceptance letter.

The Society offers a limited number of concessionary rates for those in financial hardship. Contact [email protected] (Please note you may be required to provide details/evidence to support your application for this.)

If you require an invoice to register for this course, please email [email protected]

Registration will close 24 hours before the event takes place.

GSL reserves the right to postpone or cancel a Training Course in the event of low interest. In this instance, a full refund will be offered for registration fees.