EurOCEAN 2000 - Vlaams Instituut voor de Zee

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THE SEISCAN INITIATIVE:
SEISMIC RECORD CAPTURE, IMAGE ARCHIVE, WEB ACCESS
AND DIGITAL RECONSTRUCTION TO SEG-Y.
Peter Miles 1 , Marc Schaming 2 , Albert Casas 3 , Maria Sachpazi 4 , Alessandro Marchetti 5
1 Southampton Oceanography Centre, United Kingdom; 2 EOST-ULP Strasbourg, France;
3 Facultad de Geología, Universidad de Barcelona, Spain; 4 Geodynamic Institute, National
Observatory of Athens, Greece; 5 Istituto Nazionale di Oceanografia e di Geofisica
Sperimentale, Trieste, Italy.
INTRODUCTION
Several hundred thousand kilometres of marine seismic reflection records collected up to 30
years ago remain only as paper records; and this applies to European Exclusive Economic Zone
(EEZ) surveys alone. These data records were collected during scientific programmes by
academic institutions since the 1960s. Owing to deteriorating recording media (magnetic tape)
and the absence of appropriate instrumentation these data cannot be re-played. Often the
records remain boxed and un-referenced while gradually deteriorating; those of greater interest
having suffered more by handling. SEISCAN is a project to rescue these early seismic
records which, with few exceptions, have not been archived in any photographic or
FIGURE 1. 300 dpi image of EPC seismic reflection record with 30 minute
navigation time annotation. Image ID shows country code, survey roll &
frame number with day/time of start and end.
other reproducible form. This 3-year MAST-III Supporting Initiative project involves 5
European partner institutions working with 2 commercial associated contractors. The 5