Infrastructure

Centre for Geophysical Forecasting

Infrastructure

Laboratories

Laboratories

Norwegian Fiber Optic Sensing Test site (NOR-FROST)

NORSAR just completed a new and unique test facility: NOR-FROST, the Norwegian Fibre Optic Sensing Test Site. NOR-FROST is located on the premises of NORSAR, at Kjeller, Norway, just outside Oslo.  Fibre optic cables have been deployed along three parallel trenches of 30 m length and 1m depth filled with concrete, gravel, and sand respectively. The trenches are 150 cm apart. 

CO2 Tank Laboratory

A custom CO2 tank laboratory is under construction at NTNU, instrumented with an array of ultrasonic hydrophones and flow-controlled gas injection capability to investigate the migration of gas in geological structures.  The laboratory tank is a 1:1000 scaled environment which can be fitted with scaled models of real fields.  The construction of this laboratory is now in its final stages and we expect it to be commissioned this spring, with initial calibration and testing to be conducted in the summer.

Acoustic Underwater Lab (AUL)

The lab has 4 standalone broadband hydrophones and 1 standalone 8-element vertical hydrophone array with a small raft.  There are plans to add a full vector sensor system with datalogger and independent power supply, and software-defined underwater acoustic modems for wireless communications.  These instruments will be used for recording broadband acoustic signals for monitoring both in shallow and deep water and may be used to cross-reference DAS data to better understand the stress-strain mechanisms and coupling of acousitc waves into FO cables. 

Heterogeneous and Parallel Computing Laboratory (HPC-Lab)

Prof. Anne Elster, who leads WP5, also heads the HPC-Lab which focuses on harnessing the power of multiple parallel Graphical Computing Units (GPU) to reduce the computational load of heavy tasks such as full-wave inversions and to find ways to make programming such computations more efficient.  HPC-Lab has 15+ custom-built GPU systems,  and access to NVIDIA DGX2 + IBM Power9 servers for developing HPC simulations & tools.

Marine Mammal Environmental Research Laboratory (MaMERL)

An important facet of the CGF is environmental protection and sustainable management. This includes both consideration of the impact of anthropogenic activities on the marine environment and the possible opportunistic exploitation of mobile acoustic sources, such as marine mammals and their interaction with low-frequency acoustic systems such as seismic exploration, ocean bottom seismometers, etc.  NTNU are acquiring four recording tags that will be used in collaborative marine mammal observations, the data to be shared with the University of Tromsø and the Institute of Marine Research.  The CGF DAS research also has strong implications for the detection, tracking and monitoring of vocalising large marine mammals.  

 

Datasets and Databases

Datasets and Databases

CO2Datashare

CO2Datashare is an international facility to enable data-driven science and innovation by sharing curated reference datasets from CCS projects.  The CGF will use the Sleipner CO2 storage datasets as a digital case study.

 

Trondheimfjord DAS dataset

CGF has a comparative dataset with both DAS data and simultaneous towed hydrophone data from a ship track that was run parallel to the FO cable, with an active vibro-seismic source.  The combined hydroacoustic-FO dataset can be processed for sub-bottom features to compare DAS and hydrophone results and to support DAS signal processing optimisation.

 

Other

Other

DAS infrastructure by Tampnet and ASN

CGF has access to an OptoDAS interrogator installed by ASN in Lowestoft, UK, with a sensing range of ~100 km, connected to a 240 km FO telecom cable linking the Murdoxh offshore platform to Lowestoft, UK.

Vibro Seismic Source and Short Streamer

The Centre also has a shallow-water electromechanical seismic source and short hydrophone streamer that can be used for pilot studies and comparisons in shallow water.

ATLAB

ATLAB is a deep earth data acquisition consortium: MT, CSEM, Seismological data

Shallow instrumented well

CGF has a shallow vertical well, 30m deep, instrumented with hydrophones and a FO cable, capable of recording 1-200 Hz signals.  The well is operated in collaboration with our partner, ASN.