EXPLORER: A Natural Language Processing System for Oil Exploration

EXPLORER (L ehne r t and Sbwar t z , 1982; Shwar tz 1982) i s a n o n f r a g i l e , ' b a n d s o n " l anguage a n a l y s i s sy s t em t h a t a l l o w s o i l e x p l o r a t i o n i s t s w i t h no knowledge of compute r s o r computer p r o g r a . i n g to c r e a t e c u s t o m i z e d maps . Users in T u l s a , Denver , and New O r l e a n s c u r r e n t l y have d i a l u p a c c e s s to a DEC-20 where EXPLORER i s implemented in TLISP. A u s e r c o n v e r s e s w i t h EXI~LORER about • d e s i r e d map u n t i l b o t h p a r t i e s have ag reed on an adequa te and unambiguous se t of specifications. Another phone link then carries EXPLORER's output to an IBM 3033 which runs d a t a b a s e r e t r i e v a l r o u t i n e s on c o ~ a e r c i e l we l l d a t a . When a l l the i n f o r m a t i o n has been s e c u r e d from wel l d a t a , a g r a p h i c s sy s t em t a k e s over to pe r fo rm the a c t u a l map g e n e r a t i o n . EXPLORER i s c u r r e n t l y u n d e r g o i n g e v a l u a t i o n , and i t i s t a r g e t t e d f o r a 1983 i n s t a l l a t i o n in a l l r e g i o n a l o f f i c e s of a major o i l company* f o r r e s t r i c t e d use by g e o l o g i s t s and g e o p h y s i c i s t s .