1. Mining and Oil and Gas
Mining and Oil and Gas have traditionally been the big two, but that has changed enormously in the last decade or so. To give a flavor of what my colleagues do:
2. Hydrogeology
Groundwater and how it behaves – you could be looking for new sources, or safeguarding those resources, ensuring that new developments don’t pollute the water table
3. Geotechnical
Really important for large infrastructure projects such as bridges, large buildings, tunnels, dams. If you’re going to spend millions to billions on building something, you really want to be sure that it’s on a solid foundation
4. Geothermal
This is a coming industry; there is no silver bullet to replace oil and gas for our energy needs, we’re going to need multiple sources and geothermal heat is an important part of that mix. You could be looking for something that’s hot enough to run a power station or something to heat the local swimming pool or just enough for one household. This one has a lot of crossover from the oil and gas sector.
5. Carbon capture and storage
This is another one with a lot of crossover from oil and gas. The idea is essentially that we can store compressed carbon underground in the places that used to hold oil and gas.
6. Quarrying
This is related to mining, but not quite the same. We need quarries everywhere – the material is not worth enough to be transported long distances, so if you’re building, you almost certainly need a quarry nearby.
7. Natural hazards
Earthquakes, volcanoes, landslides. Understand, predict and inform to keep people safe.
