BDS Help

Introduction

This document provides a brief overview for access to the BDS system via this WEB interface.

BDS System

The purpose of the BDS (Blacknest Data System) system is to provide storage and access to seismic data and associated information. Development of the BDS system is an on-going process adding features and working around issues in the seismic data and meta data as they arise.

The seismic data is obtained from seismic stations and arrays of stations situated at various places in the world. Each seismic station consists of one or more seismometers detecting earth movement in one or more directions. The low frequency analogue data from each seismometer is digitally sampled, at a low sample rate, and stored as a channel in a data file. The BDS system provides a core platform that is modular in design and integrates the seismic sensor data with its meta data.

Details on the BDS system is available at: https://portal.beam.ltd.uk/support/blacknest

The BDS system has a number of methods of access. This document describes access via a WEB browser using the HTTP protocol.

BDS WEB Access

The BDS WEB address system (bdsWeb) provides a simple WEB browser based access to the Seismic data and metadata stored in the BDS system. The WEB interface provides help and information along with the access to the data.
Data access is provided via the main BDS page accessible from the main menu close to the top of the page. This page presents a simple set of selection parameters that are used by the user to define a set of data or meta data. The fields in this selection are "anded" together. These are:
StartDate
The start date for the required data
StartTime
The start time within the StartDate for the required data
EndDate
The end date for the required data
EndTime
The end time within the EndDate for the required data
Network
The seismic network the data is from. The main one for this is BN for Blacknest. A blank means all networks.
Station
The seismic stations or arrays for the data. If you select an array the system will return data for all stations within that array. You can sellect multiple stations or arrays but the system limits the overal number of channels to 100.
Channel
The particular channel or channels of each station. A blank means all channels available on each station.
Source
For each set of seismic data obtained from a channel at a station there may be various sources. There are different sources when different sensors, filters or digitisers are used. Also there can be different sources due to the path that the original data took before being stored in the BDS system. Some data may have been converted to GCF format and sent over a satelite link while it may have also been stored in another format on tapes or CD's etc.
DataFormat
The format you would like the data in. The BDS system can convert the format of the seismic data into any format supported by the BDS data converters.
MetaDataFormat
Then downloading Meta data only, this is the format you would like this information in.

The BDS page has 5 main access functions operated via the green buttons below the selection box. These are:
For information on the data formats supported by the BDS see the information at: ../information/index.html