by Pat Gaffney, Bergen Software Services International A/S

Bergen Software Services (External) is a consulting and software development company specialising in visualization, multimedia, data management, and Internet technologies for the Oil, Energy, and Environment markets. We first used IRIS Explorer to produce a solution to a complex visualization problem posed by one of our clients. We liked its easy-to-use visual programming interface and its dataflow architecture, which enabled us to quickly prototype the solution to the customer's satisfaction.

We decided to take our work with IRIS Explorer a step further by using it as the basis for our family of commercial applications. AVIZIER (External) is a software environment for the 3D visualization of geoscience data.  Various AVIZIER packages are available for the display of groundwater models, flow through fractured rock and transport through porous media.

Nowadays, we are seeing an increased popularity for Windows NT as the platform of choice for most computing, and visualization in particular. Our new version of AVIZIER is the first commercial software for NT which has been built using IRIS Explorer.

We have also demonstrated the capabilities for linking IRIS Explorer applications to distributed databases.  In our AVIZIER/CSS application, the user has access to information about objects displayed in AVIZIER.  For example, by clicking on the visual representation of a borehole, details about it are retrieved from a database (which could be elsewhere on the network) and displayed on the user's machine. AVIZIER/CSS supports all popular database systems, including Oracle, SyBase, InterBase, Paradox and dBASE.

Recently, our work with IRIS Explorer in the Energy and Environment sectors was recognised by NAG, who appointed us as an IRIS Explorer Center of Excellence (External). We were delighted to receive this award, as it gives us an opportunity to focus on business solutions for the Energy and Environment sectors. A large number of organizations wish to use Internet technology to deploy intranet and extranet applications to add value to their business. NAG’s IRIS Explorer with BSSI’s AVIZIER and Web based products are well positioned to provide the new breed of IT solutions that are suited to this rapidly expanding forum.

Using the Windows NT version of AVIZIER, a 3D visualization environment for geoscience applications, and the first such commercial product developed using the new Windows NT version of IRIS Explorer. AVIZIER is being used to analyse a dataset which represents part of a 3D model of a portion of an underground site in Gorleben, Germany. This analysis is part of a simulation of groundwater modelling scenarios in preparation for building a radioactive waste disposal facility.  In the visualization, different slices of the dataset are shown coloured according to the rocktypes present in the slices. The blue outline is the position of a cutting plane used to describe the slice together with a 3D cursor for accurate placement of the plane.

The picture was produced using the new NT version of Avizier for NAMMU from BSSI A/S. NAMMU is a software code from AEA Technology for modelling flow and transport in porous media. Data from the Gorleben site in Germany was supplied by Gesellschaft für Reaktorsicherheit (GRS) mbH, Germany.

For more information, please contact:

BSSI A/S, PO Box 4265
Nygårdstangen
5028 Bergen Norway
Tel: +47-55-323244
email: info@bssi.no