Cases
ENVIRONMENTAL MANAGEMENT OF SEISMIC ACTIVITY AT THE MOUTH OF THE AMAZON
EnvironPact has developed a pilot project that uses geographic intelligence to manage seismic activity at the mouth of the Amazon environmentally. To achieve this, a platform that combines geoprocessing (GIS) and Business Intelligence was used. (BI), allowing simultaneous monitoring of projects.
Recently, the great debate in the oil and gas industry about oil exploration at the mouth of the Amazon River divided opinions and moved the media, especially in the year 2023. In this context of investigating the feasibility of oil production in such a diverse and protected region, seismic research activities are included to investigate where hydrocarbons are accumulated.
These activities involve implementing several environmental projects as a condition of the activity license to mitigate the possible impacts generated by it.
Seismic survey activity is a geophysical method used worldwide by the oil industry with the aim of mapping areas of exploratory interest. The most common technique in marine surveys is using a seismic vessel that tows compressed air arrays that emit high-intensity, intervallic sound pulses. For this reason, these human activities are ranked among those responsible for the most significant contribution of noise to the marine environment, demanding attention from regulatory agencies. (BARBOSA and OWENS, 2020). Hence, there is a need to implement environmental projects.
These environmental projects involve monitoring marine fauna, fishing vessels near the activity and the movement of vessels involved in the activity itself. They also monitor waste generation on board and environmental education training for workers.
The big challenge is constantly monitoring all these projects and the route the vessels involved in the activity take. Thus, during a recent activity at the mouth of the Amazon, a pilot project was developed that concentrates all the data from the environmental projects in a single platform, which integrates geoprocessing (GIS) and Business Intelligence. (BI), with the main objective of simultaneously and dynamically monitoring the implementation of these projects.
The integration of seismic research project data was done using the ArcGIS Online (AGOL) platform, which allowed for the creation of dashboards with interactive web maps. These dashboards display and enable interaction with spatial data and graphics, such as vessel movements, wildlife detections and fishing activity in the vicinity.
Through the platform, it was possible to instantly and simultaneously monitor all projects involved. It was also proven that there was a reduced time to prepare weekly activity monitoring reports. The results suggest that using GIS and BI in data management is essential.
The project results demonstrate how data analysis technology combined with geographic intelligence can optimize processes by providing better data visualization and dynamic presentation. Thus, project monitoring becomes more effective and the availability of this information, coupled with technology, brings efficiency to decision-making, especially when dealing with such a sensitive region that is under the scrutiny of regulatory bodies and the media.