The National Geothermal Data System

Transforming the discovery & access information for geothermal exploration
Recently, the Geothermal Energy Association (GEA) released an Air Emissions Comparison and Externality Analysis showing geothermal energy provides significant benefits to public health and the environment as one of the least-polluting and most environmentally friendly forms of energy. The analysis found binary geothermal plants produce virtually no greenhouse gases (GHG), and that dry steam and flash geothermal plants put out only trace amounts of emissions. It estimates the public benefits from clean energy produced in California and Nevada alone are worth more than $117 million annually.

Despite the environmental benefits, however, geothermal tends to be a slow-growing energy source, especially in comparison to solar and wind power. One of the largest barriers to the adoption of geothermal energy as one of the nation’s leading renewable base-load energy provider is the upfront risks associated with the exploration and characterization of subsurface resources. Proving the location and viability of a geothermal region is often one of the most data-intensive and costly components of the overall exploration process.

To ensure maximum utility of often-limited monetary resources, providing a mechanism for cost-effective data discovery and access (particularly one that permits data analytics on multiple platforms) is critical to identifying active geothermal regions. Wider access to distributed data would certainly result in lower costs for geothermal development.

This knowledge is nothing http://new. Beginning in 2009, the US Department of Energy’s Geothermal Technologies Office, through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, started doing something about it by funding the development and population of the National Geothermal Data System (NGDS). The NGDS is a distributed, interoperable network of data collected from state geological surveys across all 50 states, as well as the nation’s leading academic geothermal centers. It will also include data from recent federally funded geothermal exploration projects. NGDS is on track to become fully operation by 2014, and will serves as a platform for custom applications for accessing all geothermal data in the US and abroad.

Delivering data
The National Geothermal Data System is being built on the US Geoscience Information Network (USGIN) data integration framework to promote interoperability across the Earth sciences community. The basic structure of the NGDS employs state-of-the art informatics to advance geothermal knowledge. In addition, a software stack, deploying the Open Source CKAN data management system, will provide data consumers with a highly functional interface to access the system, and will ease the burden on data providers who wish to publish data in the system. CKAN holds the added benefit of being the system deployed by Data.gov, thereby increasing interoperability with external datasets (Data.gov increases the ability of the public to easily find, download, and use datasets that are generated and held by the Federal Government.)

It’s important to note that this software package constitutes a reference implementation and that the NGDS architecture is based on open standards, which means other server software can make resources available, and other client applications can utilize NGDS data.

Geothermal data is currently being contributed by industry, academic, and national laboratory researchers, as well as by state and federal agencies. Although the focus is on domestic data critical to identifying geothermal potential and characterizing geothermal reservoirs, international data sources may be included, especially where such data and information can be utilized of benchmarked to help develop domestic geothermal resources.

A variety of information is required to ascertain whether a potential geothermal energy site should be developed for production, including: composition and hydrologic properties of materials hosting the thermal energy; proximity to existing power grids; and the quantity of thermal energy flowing from the interior of the earth are all primary considerations.

The goal of NGDS is to provide critical geothermal-related data that can be easily access to:
1. Help companies be more (cost and time) effective in exploration, development, and usage of geothermal energy;
2. Support a knowledge repository and archive for geothermal data, lessons learned, and reports;
3. Advance earth sciences by identifying gaps in knowledge and informing new geographic areas of the United States;
4. Provide a reliable base-load energy source of knowledge; and
5. Increase public awareness of geothermal energy;

However, these goals can only be accomplished if the National Geothermal Data System provides a quality user experience, and is widely adopted by the geothermal community. There are three targeted user communities for NGDS, and each user group has different goals, needs, and tasks when interacting with NGDS as follows:

•    Data providers: Expose information to NGDS through standardized, Internet-accessible interfaces and formats;
•    End users or data consumers: Utilize NGDS to access data to support their work in geothermal energy exploration and development; and
•    Application developers: Build applications that utilize the data in NGDS, and make it easier for end-users to interact with the system.

With the assistance of geothermal domain experts, applicable metadata (data about the data), and interoperable data exchange formats are currently in production mode. Current development in progress is focused on the implementation of the portal application for searching all NGDS resources, as well as for easing contributions to the system by data providers.

Denoting success
The ultimate indicator of success will be known when the NGDS system goes live in early 2014, and real-world usage patterns emerge. Although it should be noted that the design approach taken is an agile approach, and so beta applications are operational and currently accessible to the public. This usage, in turn, is also serving to inform the current design process. Once completed, a greater geothermal community of practice will hopefully emerge as data needs are addressed and the value of an interoperable network is demonstrated.

The National Geothermal Data System will, ultimately, serve as a platform for sharing consistent, reliable geothermal-relevant technical data with users of all types, supplying tools relevant for geothermal-related work. As aggregated data supports new scientific findings, this content-rich linked data should act to broaden the pool of knowledge available, to fuel discovery and the continued development of commercial-scale geothermal energy production.


This article is based on research presented at the Stanford Geothermal Reservoir Engineering Conference, which took place earlier this year. Full papers discussing the geothermal data and metadata community needs, the application of CKAN within the system, the user interface development, and a mechanism for data contributors through the Geothermal Data Repository, are available at the Stanford Geothermal Workshop site.

National Geothermal Data System
http://geothermaldata.org

The Arizona Geological Survey
www.azgs.az.gov