System for the identification of contaminated soil and waste - prestudy

Purpose and goal

The project is a feasibility study of a user-friendly system for mapping of buried waste and contaminated soil as well as for groundwater protection using geo-electrical methods (resistivity/IP profiling). Existing instruments/systems are well suited for this application, but the workflow demands many steps with extensive manual processing, from acquisition of field data to an interpretable visualized model. The target is to automate the process and streamline the user interface by developing refined software. The target is realistic and will be implemented.

Results and expected effects

The finalized system is expected to make the technology easier to use, more accessible for the non-expert user and deployable at a lower total cost. This in turn leads to an increased use of geo-electrical methods for mapping of former landfill and brownfield sites as well as groundwater mapping on a potentially global market. ABEM should expect a growing market share with access to new markets and that increased revenue will be generated from increased sales of instruments plus services and/or software licenses.

Approach and implementation

The target will be achieved through development of a software system where the feasibility study will be used as input for a project plan and for a system requirement specification. The entire data flow from field measurement via data processing to visualization must be streamlined and provided with a seamless user interface. Existing solutions are complex as several independent software packages must be used in combination to make up the final result. Connections to databases and web services are part of the overall system design.