Storage and Processing of Big Data for Geomagnetic Support of Directional Drilling

Abstract

Modern satellite positioning and navigation technologies are not applicable in specific areas such as the exploration of oil and gas deposits by means of directional drilling techniques. Here, we can rely solely on natural geophysical fields, such as the Earth’s magnetic field. The precise underground navigation of borehole drilling instruments requires a seamless, near-real-time access to operational geomagnetic data. This paper describes the MAGNUS BD hardware-software system, deployed at the Geophysical Center of the Russian Academy of Sciences, that provides the efficient accumulation, storage, and processing of geomagnetic data. This system, based on the Big Data (BD) technology, is a modern successor of the MAGNUS processing software complex developed in 2016. MAGNUS BD represents one of the first cases of the BD technology’s application to geomagnetic data. Its implementation provided a significant increase in the speed of information processing and allowed for the use of high-frequency geomagnetic satellite data and expanding the overall functionality of the system. During the MAGNUS BD system’s deployment on a physically separate dedicated cluster, the existing classical database (DB) was migrated to the Arenadata database with full preservation of its functionality. This paper gives a brief analysis of the current problems of directional drilling geomagnetic support and outlines the possible solutions using the MAGNUS BD system.

Keywords

• geomagnetic data applications
• geomagnetic navigation
• magnetic observatories
• geomagnetic low-earth orbit satellites
• database
• Arenadata database