This appendix covers briefly the main issues involved in managing hardware, software and data to create an environment for the interpretation of 3-D seismic data. No attempt will be made to discuss specific details of individual vendors' offerings, as they change very quickly; rather, the objective is to give a general overview of the requirements for the creation of a successful interpretation environment.

Hardware

The volume of seismic data in a 3-D survey is often large. As we saw in chapter 3, a modest survey may contain 500,000 traces each of 1000 samples. A large survey might contain tens of millions of traces. It is quite usual to have several versions of the data volume (e.g. near and far trace stacks for AVO analysis, perhaps several different inversion results, and calculated attribute volumes such as coherence). Storage requirements for the trace data may amount to several to a few tens of gigabyte (1Gbyte = 109 byte). If a company has interests in a number of licences, each with its own 3-D survey, the total volume of seismic data may amount to a few terabyte (1 Tbyte = 1012 byte). Storing such a volume on disk is possible, but the cost will be less if some of the data are held offline on magnetic tape, preferably in a high-density format (e.g. helical scan) that will allow large volumes (e.g. 100 Gbyte) to be stored on a single tape.