Data Types

Leapfrog Geothermal has tools for importing, creating and working with many different types of data, including:

• GIS Data, Maps and Images
• Drilling Data
• Design Models (with the Designs extension)
• Points Data
• Geophysical Data
• Structural Data
• Meshes
• Polylines
• Geochemical Data (with the Geochemistry extension)

For an introduction to working with data tables in Leapfrog Geothermal, see the following topics in the Getting Started part of the help:

• The Project Tree
• Working With Data Tables
• Identifying and Correcting Data Errors in Leapfrog Geothermal
• Query Filters

 

Having a clean and well-prepared data set is an important factor in building reliable models, and costly and time-consuming mistakes can often be avoided by putting in the upfront effort to preparing your data before embarking on building models.

Plan Ahead

Before you start, gather all available data that will inform the model. Think about the information that can be used to support your model, including drilling data, GIS data, photos, cross sections and field mapping data. Don’t limit yourself by considering only data that is already in digital format. Historic drilling data logs in paper or PDF format can be transcribed into text-based tables for input into Leapfrog Geothermal, while scanned maps, aerial imagery and geological cross sections can be georeferenced directly in Leapfrog Geothermal.

Data Quality

Once you have gathered all available data, ensure that it is of the highest quality and can be reliably used to inform the model. Points to consider, but not be limited to, are:

• Recency. Are you using the most recent version of the data? If the data is not the latest, problems may arise when models are updated with new data, if inconsistencies aren’t identified prior to building models.
• Consistency. Leapfrog Geothermal requires that all input data is consistent in the coordinate system and units used. Don’t mix metric and imperial systems and metres and millimetres, and ensure all data uses the same XYZ-based coordinate system.
• Verification. It is always a good idea to verify the data using any available additional data. For example, if you’re working with drilling data, you could verify it using geophysical data. This is especially important when working with historic data, which may be less accurate and of lower quality compared to data collecting using contemporary techniques.

Preparing Data for Import

It is important to ensure that data is in a format supported by Leapfrog Geothermal.

To view a PDF of the file types Leapfrog Geothermal supports, click here.

Fix Data Errors at Their Source

Even though Leapfrog Geothermal can detect errors in your data, we recommend you fix errors outside of Leapfrog Geothermal for data integrity reasons. In cases where changes to an original data set were made within Leapfrog Geothermal, it is important to keep your master database up to date with any changes and use ‘export changed fields’ to extract data from Leapfrog Geothermal, so it can be later uploaded into your database.