Jan 07, 2004

PROJECT TITLE: COLOMBO PORT EFFICIENCY AND EXPANSIONPROJECT
CLIENT: SCOTT WILSON, SRI LANKA PORTS AUTHORITY, ASIAN DEVELOPMENT BANK
LOCATION: COLOMBO, SRI LANKA
DATE: 2003

EGS (Asia) Ltd. has recently completed a detailed geophysical survey in Sri Lanka on behalf of Scott Wilson for the Colombo Port Efficiency and Expansion Project. Work was completed over a 32 day period, starting on 1st November 2003.

In June 2003 the Sri Lanka Ministry of Port Development and Shipping awarded a US$ 10 million contract to British consultant Scott Wilson to prepare plans for the development of the Port of Colombo over the next 20 years. Their work covers both the expansion of the port and improvements in port efficiency. The development will see the creation of a new harbour consisting of 12 berths outside the existing port. This will have an initial depth of 18m but will be designed for an eventual depth of 23m to accommodate future requirements.

The survey operations were required to define the seabed and sub-seabed geology; a very irregular rockhead surface was known to exist in the area, ranging from outcrop at the seabed to depths in excess of 40 metres below seabed; this would have been almost impossible to map using drilling techniques.

During the survey EGS acquired a total of 1,400 km of seismic, sidescan and single beam echo sounding data over a study area of 7,900 hectares adjacent to the existing container port. Key equipment and software used:

• CNav differential GPS, giving accuracies of +/- 0.2 metres
• Knudsen 320M dual frequency echo sounder
• Klein 2000 High Resolution Sidescan Sonar
• C-Boom Low Voltage Boomer
• C-View Seabed Data Management Processing software (SDMP)

In order to obtain the full data coverage from 4m to 25m water depths, the survey was conducted from MV Sayuri (deep water) and a smaller vessel, which were provided by the National Hydrographic Office (NHO) of the National Aquatic Resources Research and Development Agency (NARA).