Description🔗
The Banff International Research Station will host the "Open-Source Tools to Enable Geophysical Data Processing and Inversion" workshop in Banff from July 28 to July 30, 2023.
Solving Earth science challenges like environmental remediation, carbon capture and storage, geothermal energy, critical mineral exploration, and groundwater assessment require top-notch mathematical and computational solutions that enable us to process geophysical data and build models of the subsurface that are in agreement with these data. The development of software tools that are freely available and easy to use accelerates research by enabling students, researchers, and industry professionals to apply them to solve relevant problems involving securing safe drinking water, providing renewable energy, and exploring critical minerals for a low carbon future.
Fatiando a Terra and SimPEG are two projects that provide open-source Python tools for processing and inverting geophysical data through a community-driven model of development. During this workshop, the two communities that develop and maintain these projects will join together to share the latest advances in their research and software packages. We will plan and design tools for solving common problems, explore new research avenues, design the software pieces needed to accelerate them, and nurture the growth of the two communities while increasing their diversity and fostering the active participation of early-career researchers.
Goals🔗
The main goal of this 2-day workshop is to gather the communities of SimPEG and Fatiando a Terra to work on the following topics:
Fully open-source geophysical workflows🔗
What are the missing pieces for developing an complete open-source geophysical workflow? Having open-source tools that can go from processing raw data to producing interpretable models would be a major asset for the broader geoscientific community, including academia and industry practitioners. During this workshop we will overview the available tools that the two projects currently offer and design a roadmap for developing the missing pieces.
Interoperability and usability of our tools🔗
We will work on increasing the interoperability of SimPEG and Fatiando, identifying overlapping points and goals, and produce a plan for the joint development of common tools that both project can leverage. Enhancing the usability of our tools is also a major goal: we will discuss ways to improve their documentation, providing new examples, references and tutorials.
Community building, diversity and sustainability🔗
We acknowledge the lack of diversity within our communities and we'd like to overcome it. We will take this opportunity to discuss strategies on how to make the two projects grow, while increasing the diversity of the projects' communities by considering initiatives like mentorship programs for underrepresented minorities and connecting with mission-driven organizations. We will also discuss ways to ensure the sustainability of the two projects in the long-term, how to nurture participation of users and train the next generation of developers and contributors.