Elsevier

Computers & Graphics

Volume 33, Issue 5, October 2009, Pages 585-596
Computers & Graphics

Knowledge Assisted Visualization
Knowledge-assisted visualization of seismic data

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cag.2009.06.005Get rights and content

Abstract

We present novel techniques for knowledge-assisted annotation and computer-assisted interpretation of seismic data for oil and gas exploration. We describe the existing procedure for oil and gas search which consists of manually extracting information from seismic data and then aggregating it into knowledge in a detail-oriented bottom-up approach. We then point out the weaknesses of this approach and propose how to improve on it by introducing a holistic computer-assisted top-down approach intended as a preparation step enabling a quicker, more focused and accurate bottom-up interpretation. The top-down approach also enables early representations of hypotheses and knowledge using domain-specific textures for annotating the data. Finally we discuss how these annotations can be extended to 3D for volumetric annotations.

Introduction

Whether we like it or not the world is dependent on energy. Oil and gas accounts for around 64% of the total world energy consumption (Iske and Randen [11]). Thus searching for and recovering these resources is important in today's society. In this paper we describe how oil and gas search is performed and we propose using knowledge-assisted visualization for improving it. There are several aspects of how the search, using seismic interpretation, is performed that makes it fit very naturally into the paradigm of knowledge-assisted visualization. A visual symbolic language for capturing knowledge has already been developed in the geosciences for interpretation. There is a high need for expressive visualizations due to large degrees of collaborative work during interpretation. Finally, large amounts of money can be saved by increasing accuracy and reducing interpretation time. We will describe in detail how these aspects of current interpretation enable knowledge-assisted visualization to accelerate the search of oil and gas.

Section snippets

Related work

The field of knowledge-assisted visualization has been described in the paper by Chen et al. [4]. We are using the meaning of data, information, knowledge and the process of knowledge-assisted visualization as defined in their paper. The entities of data, information and knowledge represent, in the order they are listed, increasingly higher degrees of abstraction and understanding. A system supporting knowledge-assisted visualization contains mechanisms for externalizing the user's knowledge

Overview

In Section 4 we first describe the current method of oil and gas search. We then point out the weaknesses of this approach and propose how to improve on it by introducing a holistic and sketch based top-down approach. The top-down approach is intended as a preparation step enabling a quicker, more focused and accurate bottom-up interpretation. It enables early representations of hypotheses and knowledge by providing domain-specific annotations of the data using textures. The section concludes

Bottom-up and top-down interpretation

In this section we describe the current bottom-up interpretation pipeline, introduce our new top-down methodology and explain some of the automated interpretation techniques enabling the top-down approach. Afterwards we compare the two approaches.

Representing knowledge with 2D textures

To ease communication, geologists and geoillustrators use a standardized language for representing knowledge. This language consists of textures for representing rock types and other information. The US Federal Geographic Data Committee (FGDC) has produced a document [5] with more than 100 standardized textures for rocks. These textures are referred to as lithological symbols in the geosciences. Fig. 6 shows three pages from this geological texture library. The oil company we have been

Representing knowledge with 3D textures

All standardized geologic textures are defined in 2D. However the Earth crust that is to be interpreted is inherently 3D. 2D textures do lend themselves directly to illustrate 2D seismic slices but have limitations when applied on 3D data as will be discussed in this section. On 3D data, 2D textures are frequently applied on planar cross sections. This technique is used in 3D geological illustrations. Several examples are given in Grotzinger et al. [10]. In this section we investigate using 3D

Conclusions

We have presented the use of knowledge-assisted visualization through computer-assisted annotation for seismic interpretation. We have proposed to perform a top-down interpretation before the currently used bottom-up interpretation. This reduces the time for interpretation and for creating interactive communicative illustrations. Standardized textures used for annotating seismic data were presented. Their applicability in knowledge-assisted visualization was shown and the positive implications

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