The Geophysical Surveyor software is based upon an optimal combination of Commercial-Off-The-Shelf (COTS) software and customized software which draws upon the strengths of both approaches to system development.  COTS software provides the stability and cost effectiveness of proven software which has been developed for the general market.  The customized software provides the specific workflows and program capabilities mandated by the project requirements.  The COTS software is based upon  Beacon's proven graphic applications for River Engineering.

The UXB Surveyor System provides three interoperable/ interchangeable phases of field operations, survey planning, real-time operations, and post-collection analysis of results. 

     Individual Layout of Survey Lines

     Parallel Copying of a Selected Survey Line

     Placement of Survey Lines Perpendicular to a Specified Baseline

These alignment lines are utilized for precisely keeping the survey vehicle on-track during real-time collection operations.  No physical strings, stake-out lines, flagging, or paint lines are required.  The survey job is planned and conducted not in an arbitrary and localized coordinate system, but in a real-world geographically registered coordinate system.  This allows collected data to easily be shown in the context of the background maps without requiring any additional work reprojecting/translating the data.

Real-time positioning data is provided by a centimeter-level accuracy Ashtech Z-surveyor.  This system utilizes a base station at a known surveyed position for generating differential corrections which are transmitted via radio link to the roving survey vehicle.  The GPS receiver on the survey vehicle is interfaced to a laptop computer using an RS-232 serial cable.  Position information is passed from the GPS receiver to the computer using a NMEA standard GPGGA serial message.  Serial messages from four towed EM61 ground conductivity sensors are also received by the laptop computer using four PCMCIA interfaces.  A GPS data message is received at a rate of once per second.  Data from the EM61 sensors are received 8 times per second.  The position associated with a particular EM61 sensor reading is interpolated between sequential GPS readings.

As data is collected, the vehicle operator is guided along the preplanned alignment lines by a graphic display showing the alignment center-line, a representation of the vehicle’s position relative to the center-line, and a direction arrow showing the direction to turn to get back on-line.  This display is also color-coded by alignment offset to allow for at-a-glance vehicle operation.  While on-line all of the alignment view graphics are shown in green.  As the alignment offset increases all of the graphics turn yellow and then to red for larger offsets.  During real-time operations, a sensor strip-chart is shown which displays sensor intensity readings for the last two minutes of operations.  Each sensor in the sensor array is shown as a separate trace on the display.  By monitoring graphic displays of sensor data a vehicle operator may note anomalies in collected data which may signify a geophysical area of interest.  This information can be used to flag that area for a higher resolution collection of data either immediately or at a later time.  In other words, the real-time indication of an anomaly can be used immediately to collect additional data in the area of the anomaly, rather than requiring that the anomaly be detected in office analysis and then requiring additional surveying work to be conducted in the specified area.

After the data has been collected, or at any time during the data collection process, the geographically registered sensor intensity data may be displayed as a color-coded surface within the context of the background map data.  By looking at this display, additional areas requiring more data may be identified and immediately collected.  The strip-chart display is also played back showing all of the intensity data collected.  User-friendly interactive graphic analysis tools are provided for looking at the collected data in detail.  By clicking on any point in the strip-chart, the position where that data was collected is shown on the planar display.  Conversely, clicking on an area of interest in the planar display results in an indication on the strip-chart of where that point is located in the sensor display.

By moving many planning and analysis functions from the office to the field, UXB International has significantly streamlined the process and improved the quality of geophysical mapping.  The use of GIS combined with high precision GPS capabilities have made the localized coordinate systems and physical string survey guidance unnecessary.  All planning, guidance, and collection operations can be conducted in real-world coordinates and immediately displayed within the context of background maps.  This results in less processing required to generate these maps, and by utilizing this data during collection operations results in a higher quality geophysical survey.