Interface and Workflow Design and Implementation for Geological Carbon Storage Modeling, Simulation, and Risk Management

A significant barrier to largescale deployment of geologic carbon storage is the lack of confidence by some geologic carbon storage stakeholders that environmental risks – those associated with potential leakage to overlying resources or the atmosphere and induced seismicity – are small and manageable. The government has produced a scientific software system that contains stateoftheart geologic carbon storage analysis capabilities, but its user interface and software distribution paradigm are not sufficiently developed to meet a “marketready” standard required for wider application by industry and regulatory stakeholders. This project will generate innovative user interfaces for governmentsupplied scientific software. Support for flexible workflows, provenance capture to document simulation history, advanced visualization capabilities, risk management support, and integration features to other geologic carbon storage software will be provided. Professional quality user interfaces and distribution methods will be produced. During the Phase I, a broad set of interviews with a number of stakeholder groups were held to define requirements for the software and to iterate on designs. Detailed architecture plans and screen designs were devised and documented. A working prototype of a portion of the software system was constructed and demonstrated to show the feasibility of the approach along with a prototype software distribution mechanism. During the Phase II, the workflows that have already been defined and designed will be fully implemented. Continued stakeholder interviews and close interaction with developers at the government sponsor are planned to generate further workflows supporting more users. Processing of external reservoir simulator data will be enabled, simulation lifecycle management facilities developed, and other advanced features developed. Quarterly alpha and beta test releases are planned in order to fully test the software in the field. Geologic carbon storage is important for reduction in atmospheric greenhouse gas increases from large CO2 producers. Industry, government, and academia are studying the long term risks and science of geologic carbon storage to mature the technologies. Having a professional software interface overlaying the deep scientific tools will broaden the use of the tools, improving the time to regulatory approval of the engineered systems and acceptance by the general public.