SEG-D Revision 3.0 Standard adopted, available

The Society of Exploration Geophysicists has adopted the SEG-D Revision 3.0 Digital Field Tape Standard. This standard is available for free download as a PDF or Microsoft Word document from the SEG Web site.

“The revision is the culmination of a multiyear, multicommittee, and multiorganzational collaboration to draft a major upgrade to prior versions of the SEG-D Field Tape Standard,” said Stewart A. Levin, SEG-D subcommittee chair for the SEG Technical Standards Committee.

The SEG Executive Committee approved the revision’s adoption during the 79th SEG Annual Meeting in Houston, USA in October 2009.

The new, extensible standard supports the need of modern and anticipated future acquisition systems to record high-accuracy timestamps, millions of channels, data from continuously monitored permanent sensor systems, and multicomponent data. It also supports a wide variety of metadata associated with a survey, including source and receiver characteristics, geo-referenced coordinates, and job, line, and survey names. Dozens of minor typos and errors dating back as far as the 1970s have been corrected.

This standard breaks relatively new ground in incorporating external tables and conventions maintained by both the SEG and outside organizations, in particular Energisitics for units of measure, the American Petroleum Institute (API) for manufacturer codes, and the European Petroleum Survey Group for coordinate systems and projections. This is not wholly unique to SEG-D Rev 3.0, as some other SEG standards rely on various API lists and formats.

The revision effort was publicized by the Technical Standards Committee with status articles in The Leading Edge and First Break, multiple presentations at SEG Annual Meetings, and an extensive international mailing-list signup of interested parties providing feedback as the effort progressed. Updated drafts were posted regularly to a Web-accessible FTP site.

In Fall 2009, the revised standard was posted on the SEG Web site for public comment prior to formal adoption. The final version reflects some minor corrections to the one available during the public comment period.

View all the Technical Standards here.