Business Continuity Planning and Disaster Recovery for Seismic Interpretation Centres

Mudit K. Mathur and Davinder Singh
GEOPIC, ONGC, Dehradun, India

This paper is being presented with the intention of providing facts and information on a rapidly evolving area of Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery and is specifically targeted towards the Seismic Interpretation Centres. This paper is intended to give some quick facts and interesting information to a wide audience.

Business Continuity Planning is used to create and validate a practiced plan for how an organization will recover and restore partially or completely interrupted critical function(s) within a predetermined time after a disaster or extended disruption. The logistical plan is called a Business Continuity Plan (BCP). In plain language, BCP is how an organization prepares for future incidents that could jeopardize the organization's core mission and its long term health. Incidents include local incidents like building fires, floods and regional incidents like earthquakes etc. In the context of the present paper, the organization will be the Seismic Interpretation Centres.

Disaster Recovery is the process of regaining access to the data, hardware and software necessary to resume critical business operations after a natural or a human caused disaster. A Disaster Recovery Plan (DRP) should also include plans for coping with the unexpected.

The paper discusses the seven tiers of Disaster Recovery along with the seven P’s for the business continuity process. It also describes the present backup / archival systems working in our Seismic Interpretation Centre and how it needs to be upgraded and integrated under a unified DR plan. The paper also discusses some common pitfalls and ways to avoid them. Available and emerging technologies to implement the BCP/DRP are also discussed in the context of the Seismic Interpretation Environment.

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