thesocietyofexplorationgeophysicists.doc

The Society of Exploration GeophysicistsMT / EMAPData Interchange Standard ? 1988, 1991 Society of Exploration Geophysicists. All rights reserved.Published 1991. Printed in the U.S.A. Introduction In early 1986, representatives from some of the major users of magnetotelluric (MT) and electromagnetic array profiling (EMAP) data formed an ad hoc committee to investigate a standard for the interchange and archiving of data. The original committee consisted of Richard Sigal (Amoco), Truman Holcombe (Standard), Roy Warren (Exxon) and Joe McNutt (Shell). By June 1986, the committee produced a first draft describing an industry-wide standard for the interchange of MT and EMAP data. Over the course of the next sixteen months, the standard was circulated to a variety of audiences who deal with MT and EMAP data including oil company representatives, contractors, and consultants. A draft was presented to the SEG Technical Standards Committee in November 1986 and copies were circulated to various reviewers. Also during this time, a FORTRAN program for reading and writing data in the standard format was implemented. This proved to be very valuable in uncovering discrepancies, inconsistencies, and implementation problems prior to adoption of the standard. In August 1987, a meeting of the ad hoc committee was held to resolve the remaining issues and approve a final draft. The resulting draft was forwarded to Mr Ben Thigpen, chairman of the SEG Technical Standards Committee, for consideration at the committee’s next meeting. After incorporating minor revisions proposed by the SEG Technical Standards Committee, the standard was presented to the SEG Executive committee and was adopted on December 14, 1987. I would especially like to recognize Richard Sigal of Amoco and Truman Holcombe of Standard Oil for being major contributors to the MT data standard project. Although many people contributed to this data standard, I would like to thank the following persons for prov