Field Data and the Gas Hydrate Markup Language

Ralf Löwner¹, Georgy Cherkashov², Ingo Pecher³, and Y. F. Makogon⁴

¹GeoForschungsZentrum Potsdam, 14473 Potsdam, Germany
²VNIIOkeangeologia, St. Petersburg, Russia
³Institute of Geological & Nuclear Sciences, Lower Hutt, New Zealand
⁴Texas A&M University, College Station, Texas, USA

Data and information exchange is crucial for any kind of scientific research activities and becomes more and more important.  The comparison between different data sets and between different disciplines creates new data, added values and finally knowledge.  Also the distribution and accessibility of research results is an important factor for international work.  The Gas Hydrate Research Community is spread over the whole world and therefore, a common technical communication language or format is strongly demanded.  The CODATA Gas Hydrate Data Task Group elaborates the Gas Hydrate Markup Language (GHML), a standard based on the Extensible Markup Language (XML) to enable the transport, the modeling and the storage of any kind of objects related to Gas Hydrate Research.  GHML offers initially an easy deducible content because of the text-based encoding of information, which doesn’t use binary data.  The result of these investigations is a custom-designed application schema, which defines the features, the elements and their properties, of all aspects of Gas Hydrates.

Within the GHML standard, the “Field Data” part is a module which is used for all data and information coming from the field.  Therefore, the application schema includes all aspects of natural gas hydrates in contrast to the synthetic gas hydrates.  The natural gas hydrates are differentiated between the field analysis part and the laboratory analysis part.  The first part contains a model of direct field investigations considering data from boreholes, outcrops and seismic research.  This part has a focal point on monitoring data.  The second part addresses to all samples coming from the field which are analyzed in laboratory. Inherently, single data values generally prevail.

The development of GHML considers international standards, particularly the standards defined by the W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) and the OGC (Open Geospatial Consortium).  Hence, the Field Data module on his part imports already defined standards, to secure exchangeability and extensibility.  Various related standards were analyzed and compared to our requirements. Primarily, basic elements of the Geographic Markup Language (GML) are imported for spatial related features.  Also other standards are imported, e.g., parts of WellLogML for elements related to drilling activities.

An extensive documentation ensures the usability of GHML consisting of a detailed explication integrated in the application schema, an HTML-based document and a detailed documentation.  Because of the close collaboration of Gas Hydrate Experts and Specialists in Geoinformatics, the application schema of GHML is user-oriented and contains all possible aspects of this research field.  The usability is the assessment factor for GHML.

 

Keywords: GHML, XML Standard, data exchange, information management