DML Services:






DML Project Flow includes:
  1. Select a study area, e.g. Haynesville-Bossier Shale Play, Texas-Louisiana Salt Basin.
  2. Select lighting project size and location, e.g. 1 square mile, 100 square miles, or 6,000 square miles.
  3. Pay 50% of the lightning project data license fee for the area, e.g. 50% of $50/acre, $45,000/100 square miles, or $145,000 for the entire Haynesville-Bossier Basin.
  4. DML prepares the lightning data, including:
    1. ordering the lightning data from Vaisala;
    2. noralizing the data across instrument upgrades;
    3. removing noise and bias from the data;
    4. geostatistically evaluating and mapping the data;
    5. indexing the data against rainfall, topography, vegetation, and other appropriate public data;
    6. delivering the resulting data package (see DML Products below) to the client for review. Remaining 50% of the payment is due on product delivery. Typically this work is accomplished in 2 months, and is all covered by the project data license fee. Note, there is an annual license fee for access to the lightning data ant for updates of new lightning strike information.
  5. DML works with the client to outline a total work plan to do addition integration, correlation, and trend analysis if needed. Cost for this work are tied to:
    1. data costs;
    2. consulting fees, and
    3. pre-approved expenses.
    This work might include:
    1. regional exploration trend studies;
    2. play fairway pattern analysis studies;
    3. prospect portfolio ranking;
    4. integration with commercial datasets;
    5. integration with proprietary datasets; and
      6. preparing predefined maps and reports.








DML Products:






There are a variety of mapping products available based on the spatial variations of lightning strikes. Vaisala's database goes back to 1999 and contains key attributes from hundreds of millions of lightning strikes. Again, DML normalizes, cleans, and data mines this database to create derivative data and maps, including data location maps (control points), contour maps, and fault lineament interpretation maps of:
  • EM1, a variation of principle component analysis combining the major axis of Rise Time, Peak Current, and Peak-to-Zero measurements.
  • fault lineament interpretations
  • EM2, a variation of principle component analysis combining the minor axis of Rise Time, Peak Current, and Peak-to-Zero measurements.
  • RT, Rise Time.
  • PC,Peak Current.
  • P2Z, Peak-to-Zero time.
  • TWT, Total Wavelet Time.
  • WS, Wavelet Symmetry.
  • T, Topography.
  • MLLHT, Moon Local Longitude High Tide.
  • various merged map displays, including High Tide lightning strikes over topography or topography over High Tide lightning strikes.
DML packages the derivative data, makes maps, interprets faults, and prepares a report sumarizing the results for the study area. This report is updated annually with new lighting strike data, new techniques learned doing other projects, and suggestions as to other data to integrate with the sublicensed lightning data.

Integration with potential field data (gravity, magnetics, magnetotelluric, or electric), outcrop data, well log data, seismic, production data, temperature, pressure, soil moisture, vegetation, and other types of data is available as described above in Part 5 of the DML Project Work Flow.