IAMG 2001--Cancún Technical Program--Session I

Home Page Technical Program Session I Intro Session I Papers

The "Terre Virtuelle" Project: A Company Plan for BRGM by Francois C. Robida*, Jean-Marc Trouillard*, and Alain Beauce, BRGM, Orleans, Cedex, France BRGM launches a project entitled "Terre Virtuelle" (for "Virtual Earth"). This decision is the fruit of an analysis based on the needs of its clients, the potential of new tools, and the requirements of new economic systems. Needs change rapidly, particularly regarding environmental, resource management and planning purposes: authorities need answers that not only cover all aspects of a problem, but also that can be output in a format useful for discussion and adapted to decision making. This demand assumes that BRGM integrates all data concerning its own thematic components, but also increasingly that these be combined with external ones, such as socio-economic or land-use data. This demand also implies that the results are accessible in a format suitable to the non-specialist. Tools, whether available or soon to be so, have brought such demands within reach due to a major evolution of NICT (New Information and Communication Technologies), including interoperability standards, network technology, high output, and display modes. New economic systems will be based on on-line services and real time. "Terre Virtuelle" should provide BRGM with an easy entry into this domain and the opportunity to fully enhance its expertise by offering its clients on-line access to added-value services. The analysis highlights the essential objective of the project, namely to create an all-encompassing computerized reference base of the subsurface, integrating all significant parameters and involving the development of relevant models, with a view to client-oriented services. "Terre Virtuelle" should be both a data management tool, able to grasp data from various sources and compute them in cogent 3D or even 4D models, and a data bank including on line french geological survey data, ready for exploitation at various scales from local (city, aquifer, ore deposit) to national (geology, natural hazards) and global (major mineral deposits, plate tectonics) scales The analysis also shows that as the project integrates all thematic subjects, it constitutes a company plan common to all. The project will be carried out in conjunction with partners in terms of its implementation and necessary research.