Quality Assurance and Quality Control Procedures for AEM data A work in progress  

Authors / CoAuthors

Costelloe, M.T.

Abstract

Airborne electromagnetic data (AEM) are used in many and diverse applications such as mineral and energy exploration, groundwater investigations, natural hazard assessment, agriculture, city planning and defence. Unfortunately, many users do not have access to a simple workflow for assessing the quality of the data that they are using. This poster outlines the main quality assurance and quality control (QA-QC) procedures used by Geoscience Australia for our 2008-11 AEM surveys. Minor processing errors can dramatically reduce the quality of the data to the point that interpreters will be unable to use the data, or worse still, will be misled by features or characteristics produced during acquisition and processing. These scenarios not only impact the application at the time of interpretation, but can seriously impact the reputation and perceptions of the AEM industry. Every effort should be made to ensure that maximum fidelity is preserved in the data during acquisition and processing so that the best possible data are available for interpretation. Geoscience Australia is embarking on a project to upgrade the National Airborne Geophysical Database to better manage the data from major AEM surveys. This will better preserve the data and associated documentation to allow users to access and take advantage of the data well into the future. The quality of historical data included in this endeavour will unfortunately be variable and dependent on the QA-QC standards of the time. Geoscience Australia currently holds over 150 000 line kilometres of AEM data funded by the Commonwealth Government, State Governments and industry. Much of this data is available online for download, but is not available via the Geophysical Archive Data Delivery System (GADDS). Geoscience Australia is planning the expansion of GADDS to accommodate AEM data into the future. It is hoped the procedures outlined on the poster will be widely accepted by users, in particular new users, as a set of minimum requirements to help ensure that AEM data will be of a consistent quality and to a higher standard acknowledging it as the valuable resource it is. Key words: Airborne electromagnetic data; National Airborne Geophysical Database; AEM; QA-QC.

Product Type

nonGeographicDataset

eCat Id

72816

Contact for the resource

Keywords

• External Publication

( Theme )

• AEM

( Theme )

• Airborne Electromagnetics

( Theme )

• geophysics

Australian and New Zealand Standard Research Classification (ANZSRC)

• Earth Sciences

• Published_Internal

Publication Date

2012-01-01T00:00:00

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Australian Government Security ClassificationSystem    

Classification - unclassified

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Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Licence    

Access - restricted

Use - license

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notPlanned

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geoscientificInformation

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The Commonwealth Government through Geoscience Australia has funded regional AEM datasets as seen in the Onshore Energy Security Program (OESP). GA also manages AEM surveys for other Commonwealth, State and Territory Government Agencies. New users of AEM data have asked GA to provide information in regard to the QA-QC checks and procedures in place and this motivated this poster. AEM data are expensive to acquire and consequently should be treated as a valuable resource. Every effort should be made to ensure that maximum fidelity is preserved in the data during acquisition and processing. Data at a minimum standard, should facilitate fit-for-purpose interpretation, be available for reprocessing, enhancements and modelling to ensure the usefulness and longevity of the data. With the increase in the numbers of AEM systems, the applications of the data and new clients, there is an increasing need to standardise AEM data requirements. Minor errors can dramatically reduce the quality of AEM data to the point that interpreters will be unable to use the data, or worse still, will be misled by features or characteristics produced during acquisition and processing. These scenarios not only impact the application at the time of interpretation, but can seriously impact the reputation and perceptions of the AEM industry. Many authors have documented AEM data acquisition, processing and interpretation methods which including - but by no means restricted to - Palacky and West 1991, Lane 2000, Smith 2001 and Auken et al., 2009 etc., which have lead to current industry standard best practice. Including time domain (TEM) and frequency domain (FEM) methods there are more than 14 different AEM systems currently operating in Australia. This poster is designed to highlight the minimum QA-QC requirements considered common to all time domain systems. Geoscience Australia (GA) is the custodian of the most comprehensive publicly available Australian airborne magnetic, gamma-ray, elevation model, electromagnetic and gravity databases. GA is embarking on a project to upgrade the National Airborne Geophysical Database (NAGD) to better manage the data from AEM surveys. Geoscience Australia plan to make available via the Geophysical Archive Data Delivery System (GADDS) AEM data in the future. It should be noted that with historical datasets the complexity entailed in data re-use increases with older acquisition systems and versions thereof, due to lack of fundamental information such as system geometry, waveform, window times, metadata and noise estimations.

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