Scanned BGS Site Investigation Reports From 2002 Onward

Scanned images of onshore Great Britain site investigation reports held in the British Geological Survey archives. Scanning began in 2002 and is ongoing, with the entire Edinburgh collection scanned and new reports from Keyworth added since 2002. Images are stored in TIFF format and indexed via the site investigation and borehole databases.

Use Cases

• Train an object detection model to extract text and diagrams from scanned TIFF images of geological reports.
• Analyze the geographic distribution of borehole investigations by linking report images to the borehole database.
• Build a searchable digital archive by indexing scanned report images based on their associated site investigation metadata.

Strengths

• Contains the entire scanned collection from the BGS Edinburgh archives.
• Includes new reports received since 2002 from the BGS Keyworth location, indicating ongoing updates.
• Reports and their associated borehole images are indexed and linked via two dedicated databases.

Limitations

• The collection is partially digitized, with only new reports from the Keyworth location scanned since 2002; older Keyworth reports may not be included.
• Data is provided as scanned TIFF images, requiring OCR or manual processing for text analysis.
• Specific quantitative details like total image count, file sizes, or temporal range beyond the start date are unknown.

Provenance

Source

British Geological Survey (BGS) archives.

Collection Method

Scanning of paper, microfilm, or digital format reports held in BGS archives.

Time Range

Scanning started in 2002 and is ongoing; report creation dates are unspecified.

Freshness

Ongoing scanning with new records added; last metadata update was 2026-03-11.

Geography

Onshore Great Britain (or near shore).