The international rock Imaging Summit (iRIS-2020) brought together eighty hydrocarbon and mineral resource rock imaging experts from across the globe, a mix of practitioners and researchers, to hear nearly forty presentations in twelve sessions, over the course of two days
Speakers shared how they have leveraged a selection of different digital imaging technologies to enhance their understanding of rock and fluid flow properties in an effort to derive more reliable values for them.
iRIS-2020 closed with a panel session moderated by Brendon Hall of Enthought. The panel comprised Genolé Tallec of Thermo Fisher Scientific, Marijn Boone of Tescan, Geert Vanhoyland of Bruker, Rob Bradley of Geotek and Alan Butcher of GTK.
Addressing the topic “The Future of Rock Imaging”, the panellists agreed that the summit had highlighted the variety of techniques being applied to the challenge of rock imaging. The future will bring an even broader range of imaging technologies as developments in other industries are adapted and applied to the geoscience domain.
This will encourage a greater fusion of methods and a greater reliance on advanced computing methods. All agreed that iRIS-2020 had been a great success. “Everyone who sat through the last two days will have learned something new,” said Alan Butcher, co-chair of the event. All are already looking forward to iRIS-2021, which will hopefully be a hybrid event: a physical meeting with some virtual sessions.
The inaugural event was held virtually between 17-19 November. The first day of iRIS-2020 was dedicated to a workshop run by Thermo Fisher Scientific, the gold sponsor of iRIS-2020, which was so popular that it was over-subscribed. The other sponsors of iRIS-2020 were Core Laboratories, Tescan, Bruker, Geotek, Zeiss, Enersoft, Imago, Reservoir Rock Technologies, Vidence, Enthought and Core Specialist Services.
