Part of the geologist's role is to accumulate diverse information and synthesize it into a useable form for oil prospecting. The search for geographically linked information takes a major part of a geologist's time. Software developers have had difficulty computerizing this process because of the irregularity of much of the data and its multiple formats.

A new tool from MetaCarta will help geoscientists minimize the time normally spent searching for such information and maximize the prospecting time, the company says. The software, called geOdrive, organizes text information by "geoparsing" on geographic and technical keywords. The texts are assigned latitude and longitude values so they can be quickly searched by area and the documents listed for review.

04/20/04