Implicit structural modeling of geological structures - a benchmark.

Guillaume Caumon and Julien Renaudeau and Modeste Irakarama and Pauline Collon and Lachlan Grose and Gautier Laurent and Laurent Ailleres and Miguel Varga de la and Florian Wellmann and Simon Lopez and Gabriel Courrioux and Michael Hillier and Eric de Kemp. ( 2019 )
in: 2019 Ring Meeting, ASGA

Abstract

Implicit methods have gained significant popularity in recent years as an alternative to surfacebased structural modeling methods (also known as contouring, gridding or explicit structural modeling). These approaches represent geological interfaces as equipotentials of a scalar field. Overall, this principle make structural modeling more automatic by removing the need to project data onto an evolving surface and by making the geological surfaces the product of the computation rather than its prerequisite. It also allows for incorporating specific types of observations such as intraformational orientation measurements and stratal traces and exploits the consistency between several conformable horizons. it Over the years, several formulations of implicit methods have been proposed. Whereas they share the same implicit surface principle, these different approaches have not yet been quantitatively compared beyond theoretical discussions. In this paper, we review the main categories of implicit methods and propose several open benchmark data sets to test them. Our goal is to compare how the various formulations behave to predict the geometry of layers away from observation points. This allows us to identify some avenues for future research, in particular for handling intensely deformed strata and managing large thickness variations. The proposed data sets are expected to help the evaluation and the development of future geological modeling methods.

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BibTeX Reference

@inproceedings{CaumonRM2019,
 abstract = { Implicit methods have gained significant popularity in recent years as an alternative to surfacebased structural modeling methods (also known as contouring, gridding or explicit structural modeling). These approaches represent geological interfaces as equipotentials of a scalar field. Overall, this principle make structural modeling more automatic by removing the need to project data onto an evolving surface and by making the geological surfaces the product of the computation rather than its prerequisite. It also allows for incorporating specific types of observations such as intraformational orientation measurements and stratal traces and exploits the consistency between several conformable horizons. it Over the years, several formulations of implicit methods have been proposed. Whereas they share the same implicit surface principle, these different approaches have not yet been quantitatively compared beyond theoretical discussions. In this paper, we review the main categories of implicit methods and propose several open benchmark data sets to test them. Our goal is to compare how the various formulations behave to predict the geometry of layers away from observation points. This allows us to identify some avenues for future research, in particular for handling intensely deformed strata and managing large thickness variations. The proposed data sets are expected to help the evaluation and the development of future geological modeling methods. },
 author = { Caumon, Guillaume AND Renaudeau, Julien AND Irakarama, Modeste AND Collon, Pauline AND Grose, Lachlan AND Laurent, Gautier AND Ailleres, Laurent AND Varga de la, Miguel AND Wellmann, Florian AND Lopez, Simon AND Courrioux, Gabriel AND Hillier, Michael AND de Kemp, Eric },
 booktitle = { 2019 Ring Meeting },
 publisher = { ASGA },
 title = { Implicit structural modeling of geological structures - a benchmark. },
 year = { 2019 }
}