PESGB makes SEG-Y workstation friendly (February 1998)

Jill Lewis of Troika, speaking at thePetroleum Exploration Society of Great Britain (PESGB), gave a progress report on thePESGB's attempt to re-define the SEG-Y format in a more workstation friendly manner (PDMVol. 2 N° 9).

Lewis described SEG-Y as an "incredible success story - still going strong after 23 years of use, and capable of recording anything from a single 2D line to a large 3D survey". In view of this the PESGB group was not intending to fix what wasn't broke, but rather to specify a revised format and appendices to the specification. The revision makes use of the general SEG-Y structure but adds specifications to allow

Data loading direct to the workstation

Databasing of seismics

Multiple lines per reel

Data type independence from major workstation vendors

Media type independence.

Concerning the latter point, the new format intends to be used for non-tape media and is specified as a general byte-stream format which can be used for data on disk. In general the modifications have been categorized as "codifying existing practices". Indeed SEG-Y has been the subject of planned revisions for a couple of years now, but SEG efforts to re-vitalize the format have so far failed. It is hoped that the PESGB work will be adopted by the SEG as the definitive revision of SEG-Y. More information from troika@troika.demon.co.uk.