Principal Investigator: Paul Mann
Postdoctoral fellow: Alejandro Escalona
Graduate students: Trevor Aitken (The University of Texas at Austin) and Sonya Punch (The University of Houston)
Undergraduate student: Lisa Watson (The University of Texas at Austin)

Funding Agency: The Petroleum Research Fund, American Chemical Society and the Jackson school of Geosciences at The University of Texas at Austin

Venmar (Venezuelan margin database) consists of an integrated database based on geographic information system (ArcGIS) and html files along the Venezuelan-southern Caribbean margin (Fig. 1). The data will include most of the published geologic data in the literature and graduate thesis and dissertations. Most of the data available are scaled and linked to each other, ready for multiple comparison between the data and published interpretations in the region.

Figure 1. Area covered for Venmar

The database base includes seismic, well and outcrop data, in addition to published maps and references. The structure is shown in Figure 2.

Figure 2. Venmar database structure

GIS data management of geologic and geophysical data. We use ArcGIS as a tool to organize this large amount of data over such a wide region.  GIS allows enhances the value of isolated studies by georeferencing them and allowing it to be displayed as “layers”.  GIS data sets can also be made available as research products at the end of the study, allowing future workers to quickly make progress in complex areas. (see ESRI for more detail.)

Figure 3. Snapshot of the GIS database.

Html data management of geologic and geophysical data. We use html files as a tool to visualize and download the data.   The html files are linked with the GIS database for geographic location and selection of the data. This will facilitate the accessibility to the data and enhanced the visualization and regional context of the data . However, the html files are built in a way that by using any web browser in the market (i.e. Explorer, Netscape, etc..) the data can be located , visualized and downloaded without the use of ArcGIS.

Figure 4. Visualization and downloading of data via HTML.