Success story: 14 February 07
Research tool transformed into sought-after survey software

Foundation? investment has helped transform a research tool that has been under development since the 1980s into a smart commercial package that is being snapped up by the international oil exploration market.

Research and consultancy company GNS Science has used investment of $220,000 from the Foundation’s Pre-Seed Accelerator Fund (PSAF?) to revamp its GLOBE Claritas seismic data processing software and has subsequently found a United States partner to help take the product to market.

Globally there are now nearly 40 site licences for the software, up from just 10 in 2000, in locations from Jordan to Japan.

The Claritas software reconstructs seismic signals into two- and three-dimensional images of the geological structure of the earth’s subsurface, to a depth of 10 kilometres. Demand for the product is strong because of its adaptability and its superior processing speed, achieved through a partnership with the New Zealand Supercomputing Centre.

A unique feature of Claritas is that the software works just as well on a laptop in the field as it does on a super computer.

Dr David Darby, the Business Development Manager for GNS Science, says PSAF funding has been crucial in getting Claritas from the laboratory to the marketplace.

“Claritas was first developed 20 years ago but it was really just intellectual property. Big growth in the petroleum sector has been the trigger to power up the product and the PSAF investment has been the tool to do that. It’s partly technical development but it also required us to go through a process of building business links, thinking about the skills and firepower we needed and planning for commercialisation.”