Working with GROT GPRs in Australia

October 8, 2009

In March 2009, a group of our employees, invited by an Australian company, which has bought several of our georadars, demonstrated the more advanced equipment and GPR data processing technology implemented in GROT 12 ground penetrating radar. It is worth mentioning that the receiving Party has made a favourable impression on us, not only with their hospitality, but also with its highly professional approach to our equipment testing.

For one month we have been given the opportunity to work on 17 different areas and to interpret the results of scanning, and the data could be compared with the results of the magnetic airborne survey, the seismic survey and drilling. This allowed us collecting a significant amount of information supplementing our database, which is used for semi-automated interpretation of GPR data.

Our team visited the two largest coal polygons of the company in Australian states of New South Wales and Queensland. High level of our work organization let us cover a total of more than 20 km of tracks, making a way on the ground and in the air of more than 3000 km. We worked at various geological objects such as dikes, faults, diatremes, old abandoned mines, watercourses of ancient rivers, etc. Our colleagues were interested, first of all, in the possibility of using our technology to diagnose rapidly changing geological rocks compound and, of course, in the depth and the resolution of our devices. Before us, many manufacturers of ground penetrating radars from different countries visited them. The result of the expedition was the equipment purchase and thanks from the company representative, who was accompanying us during the whole trip.

Even for non-specialists it was clear that the GPR data in many cases are more informative in the analysis of soils to a depth of 80-100 meters than seismic survey data. The optimal option is the concurrent use of electromagnetic and seismic devices and joint interpretation of the results. It is important to mention that the budgets of Australia as a whole and its individual states to a large extent are formed by contributions from the mining companies, operating on their territories. In accordance with Australian legislation, one of the companies' performance efficiency criteria is the amount of harm done to the environment, including the one done at the phase of preliminary studies. In accordance with this criteria requirements and GROT family georadars scanning depth (which is over 200 meters), our technology has been out of competition. So before our departure to Russia the host Party has made a presentation of the results of our work and the device itself for the Minister of Natural Resources of New South Wales in Sydney.

At this meeting our ability and willingness to solve the problems that will stand on the way of our colleagues in the near future have been confirmed.