The Browse Basin is a Paleozoic to Cenozoic depocentre, situated offshore Australia's Northwest Shelf, which contains significant hydrocarbon reserves. Some of the gas accumulations have naturally elevated levels of CO2. As part of the National CO2 Infrastructure Plan, a regional revised sequence stratigraphic analysis and new pre-competitive geophysical data acquisition (marine seepage surveys and aeromagnetic data) were undertaken to better understand the basin-wide prospectivity of the Cretaceous supersequences both for CO2 storage and hydrocarbons. Long-lived entrenched fluvial systems flowing from the Kimberley on the inner-shelf formed a complex network of sedimentary inputs that operated throughout the Cretaceous. These fluvial systems delivered numerous large Cretaceous submarine fan complexes, with variable reservoir characteristics, which were deposited in the central and northern depocentres during sea level falls in the Valanginian, Barremian, Campanian and Maastrichtian. Paleogeography, play fairways and common risk element maps have been completed to high-grade areas of interest. Risk assessments of these plays focused on containment quality and seal integrity. Simple well log analysis provided information on reservoir quality (porosity and permeability). Reactivated faults, proximity to the seal pinchouts, connectivity between sand bodies, hydrocarbon presence and indication of present-day or paleo-seepage were investigated. Geochemical analysis and Grains with Oil Inclusions (GOI) techniques were used to assess the seal integrity. Updates on current stress field and seal integrity modelling predict fault behaviour under the current stress field and which fault trends could be reactivated with CO2 injection. Further detailed studies and modelling will be required to better predict suitability and volume of potential CO2 storage in high-graded areas, which are not in direct conflict with hydrocarbon prospectivity.

Poster for Annual Meeting of The Society for Organic Petrology (TSOP), Sydney, 27 September - 3 October 2014. Content linked to abstract of the same name (GeoCat #81610).

We describe a surface cover change detection method based on the Australian Geoscience Data Cube (AGDC). The AGDC is a common analytical framework for large volumes of regularly gridded geoscientific data initially developed by Geoscience Australia (GA). AGDC effectively links geoscience data sets from various sources by spatial and temporal stamps associated with the data. Therefore, AGDC enables analysis of generations of consistent remote sensing time series data across Australia. The Australian Reflectance Grid 25m is one of the remote sensing data sets in the AGDC. The data is currently hosted at the high performance computational cloud at the National Computational Infrastructure. Our change detection method takes advantage of temporally rich data in the AGDC, applying time series analysis to identify changes in surface cover. To detect change we apply a series of modules, which are independent of each other. The modules include: - a pixel quality mask and time series noise detection mask, which detects and filters out noise in data; - classification modules based on a random forests algorithm, which classifies pixels into specific objects using spectral information; - training modules, which create classification modules using known surface cover data; - time series analysis modules, which model and reduce time series data into coefficients relevant to change detection targets; - temporal and spatial classification modules, which classify pixels into predefined land cover classes. This paper summarises development of the work flow and the initial results from example applications, such as reforestation / deforestation detection and coastal zone mapping.

We propose to value-add to Australia's magnetic field data by developing a national-scale database of magnetic solutions, each attributed with sensitivity estimates derived by the process as illustrated in. This database will be a resource for any interpretive use of the national magnetic field data, including for the construction of regional geological models. Depth solutions derived by the methodology we propose to implement also have attributes of magnetisation intensity, thickness and dip, which should assist in the interpretive process of assigning those sources to geological units.

Monitoring is a regulatory requirement for all carbon dioxide capture and geological storage (CCS) projects to verify containment of injected carbon dioxide (CO2) within a licensed geological storage complex. Carbon markets require CO2 storage to be verified. The public wants assurances CCS projects will not cause any harm to themselves, the environment or other natural resources. In the unlikely event that CO2 leaks from a storage complex, and into groundwater, to the surface, atmosphere or ocean, then monitoring methods will be required to locate, assess and quantify the leak, and to inform the community about the risks and impacts on health, safety and the environment. This paper considers strategies to improve the efficiency of monitoring the large surface area overlying onshore storage complexes. We provide a synthesis of findings from monitoring for CO2 leakage at geological storage sites both natural and engineered, and from monitoring controlled releases of CO2 at four shallow release facilities - ZERT (USA), Ginninderra (Australia), Ressacada (Brazil) and CO2 Field Lab (Norway). Presented at the 2014 CO2CRC Research Symposium, 25-26 November 2014, Torquay, Victoria.

The damage caused by the major floods in 2011 over Eastern Australia, created an increased demand for centralised flood information. The National Flood Risk Information Project (NFRIP) was created to help fill this demand. One component of NFRIP is the provision of historic flood information from satellite imagery, which is being delivered through the Water Observations from Space (WOfS) product from Geoscience Australia. The WOfS product summarises how frequently surface water was observed by satellites over the Australian continent between 1987 and 2014. Where water is observed regularly or all the time, it indicates the presence of permanent water bodies such as lakes or dams. Where it is observed only a few times it indicates the possible occurrence of events such as flooding. WOfS is particularly useful where no other flood information exists, such as across broad inland floodplains and where no flood studies have been performed. WOfS is currently available to the public and is already being used for studies that benefit from continental-scale water extents. It provides information on how water moves across the landscape and might impact roads and other infrastructure. It is also being used in water resource assessments, aquatic ecological studies and to update Australia's hydrological mapping datasets.

Geoscience Australia (GA) has developed the Earthquake Risk Model (EQRM) as an open source software for earthquake hazard and risk assessment. In the EQRM, the likelihood of physical damage states for the buildings and the direct economic loss from the damage to structural and non-structural building components are estimated using fragility and vulnerability models, respectively. The methodology implemented in the EQRM to compute the likelihood of physical damage states and the economic loss is similar to the HAZUS methodology, which is based on the capacity spectrum method (CSM) applied to a generalized Single-Degree-Of-Freedom (SDOF) model of the building. One limitation of the current approach is identified, which is the underestimation of the damage probability for non-structural acceleration-sensitive (NSA) components with a consequent underestimation of economic loss. This underestimation is found to be more problematic for larger ground shaking intensities. To overcome the limitation of the current methodology, time history analysis of a SDOF system with an elliptical hysteresis is performed and regression analysis is conducted to relate structural response and input ground moition parameters to maximum absolute acceleration. The estimated maximum absolute acceleration is then used in computing damage probability for NSA components instead of the spectral acceleration of the performance point based on the CSM. The effect of the refined fragility of the NSA component and the ressulting vulnerability models are highlighted and discussed in a probabilistic risk assessment for a building portfolio in Newcastle, Australia.

No abstract available

Legacy product - no abstract available

Fifteen pre-competitive stratigraphic holes have been drilled to test geological and mineral system models in the 'greenfields' Stavely region of western Victoria. Prior to drilling, seismic reflection and refraction, gravity, and airborne magnetic data were used to estimate the thickness of cover at the selected drill sites. This analysis also tested the reliability of the geophysical techniques in a range of geological conditions. Comparisons with preliminary drilling data indicate that seismic refraction data successfully predicted cover thickness at six out of seven sites. Estimates of depth to magnetic source at the top of basement, derived from airborne magnetic data successfully predicted cover thickness at eight of ten sites. Seismic reflection was the least reliable technique with one out of four successful predictions. However, despite their success rate, neither the refraction nor the magnetic data gave reliable cover thickness estimates where cover materials were highly magnetic or had high seismic velocities.