Objectives - Why do we need BoreholeML?

Knowledge of borehole data is crucial, since the geological situation needs to be investigated and subsurface features viewed to resolve problems of accessibility to natural resources, investigation for building foundation, risks of land slides, flooding hazards etc. Public authorities, companies and finally all citizens have a vital interest in subsurface data. Geological features, like rock layers or groundwater aquifers, are naturally extended features which are not limited to any administrative units and therefore need to be handled with cross-border views.

However, subsurface data derived from drilling or mining activities are collected and stored in project files or repositories, which are managed by the geological survey organisations in their own country or state, mainly in proprietary formats. If geological features of a certain extent are concerned, a vast amount of distributed data has to be handled. First, there is the need to identify the necessary information in the area of investigation, e.g. viewing location maps. Second, a search in the header data of the borehole descriptions – so-called metadata – like drilling purpose or depth must be possible. Next, the necessary detail data is needed in a format which can be processed consistently and independently by special software. Therefore an urgent demand existed for a standardised exchange format with additional multilingual support.

Due to the federal organisation of the State Geological Surveys in Germany which are subordinated public authorities assigned to the ministries of economy or environment of the German federal states, there are as many borehole databases as states exist. Each survey of the respective state organises and runs a borehole database with its own structure, its own database management system and the necessary software for interpretation of the measurements. Moreover, the borehole information is described by about 5 different geological standards in the various states.

This splitted situation in Germany is similar to the European conditions in the large context. All over Europe we have to deal with many different standards and databases too, although normally only one central geological survey per European country exists.

Therefore suitable strategies must be developed to organise a borehole data exchange within Germany and the European countries as well. For example, projects on cross-border geological features need an agreement to common lists of geological and geotechnical terms to which the individual terms must be mapped.