SAND Geophysics

Research & Development

Innovation is at the core of SANDs working philosophy, continually pushing the boundaries of what is possible to develop novel solutions for complex and challenging marine near-surface problems.

Research services.

At the corporate-level, SAND has strong ties with the several UK universities, most notably the University of Southampton. SAND currently co-funds two PhD projects through the University of Southampton (on 4D imaging and UXO discrimination) as well as working closely with various members of the Ocean and Earth Sciences staff on the continued development of 3D Chirp.

At the personnel-level, SAND staff have extensive experience in undertaking research and development, both within the academic and industry sectors. The outputs from these projects have been published in the highest-level peer-reviewed academic journals and won awards at conferences, whilst simultaneously maintaining a focus on remaining commercially viable solutions.

Dr Mark Vardy has supervised 5 PhD students, authored or co-authored over 20 peer-reviewed publications, is an Associate Editor for Near Surface Geophysics, and has developed/applied a range of novel high-resolution marine acquisition and processing methodologies.

He was a co-developer of the first commercial decimetre-resolution 3D seismic system, has written numerous seismic processing algorithms (e.g., frequency-approximated Kirchhoff imaging, geotechnical inversion), and has consulted on a range of research projects, from understanding river evolution in Bangladesh to mapping the edifice collapse deposits around Montserrat. Within SAND, Mark’s primary focus is the continued development of our in-house QSI software.

For more information on seismic inversion, click here.

Dr Luke Pinson has published over 10 peer-reviewed publications and presented his research findings at conferences all over the World.

His principle area of expertise is developing ground breaking new seismic techniques, particularly around linking the acoustic and rock physical properties. His 2008 paper on seismic attenuation was awarded a commendation by the journal Geophysics, narrowly missing out on winning the prestigious Best Paper in Geophysics prize. Technically, he has worked extensively on the commercial development of AUVs for application in the Oil and Gas sector.

Richard Hamilton specialises in the implementation of new technologies, leading the development of new industry standard UXO survey methods. In particular, he has worked on improving the robustness of pUXO classification through the optimal acquisition and integrated interpretation of multi-sensor arrays, reducing the number of targets requiring mitigation and/or inspection.

Seismic imaging & inversion

Please contact us if you have a research project SAND can help with