Originally announced in 2020, in full covid-19 crisis, IFPen*’s Tellus Share Community has been relaunched. Tellus Share Community (TSC) a.k.a. ‘towards geosciences 4.0’ sets out to ‘accompany the digital transformation of industries associated with the underground environment’. Current partners include Andra (France’s nuclear waste management company), Petrobras, Perenco and TotalEnergies.
Tellus is led by IFPen Ressources Energétiques, a member of the Carnot Network, a collection of French public-private R&D partnerships. TSC conducts research into emerging digital solutions (data science, artificial intelligence, virtual reality, etc.) that will facilitate the work of geoscientists in industriessuch as underground storage, geothermal energy, mines, oil and civil engineering.
Membership costs €25,000/year and allows participants to consult with each other on their operational needs, sharing challenges and usage scenarios and monitor the development of IFPen prototypes and new digital geoscience tools. One early Tellus project is a ‘digital companion for subsurface professionals’ that reduces the burden of time-consuming and repetitive activities, such as data mining.’ Another solution, developed in partnership with TotalEnergies helps geologists explore the large volumes of heterogeneous data accumulated across sedimentary basins. Along with the Community offering, members can opt for one-to-one technology watch partnerships covering a particular area of interest.
We were curious about the origin of the ‘Tellus’ name. Had this been recycled from earlier CGG/Fugro data products? Not at all. Tellus poetically refers to the Roman equivalent of the Greek Gaia, goddess of the earth and more prosaically to the English ‘tell us’ as suggesting an intelligent digital companion.
*IFP Energies Nouvelles, the French Petroleum/New Energies Institute.
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