Joint full-waveform inversion of time-lapse seismic data sets

Author(s):  
Musa Maharramov* ◽  
Biondo Biondi
Geophysics ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 81 (4) ◽  
pp. R225-R235 ◽  
Author(s):  
Di Yang ◽  
Faqi Liu ◽  
Scott Morton ◽  
Alison Malcolm ◽  
Michael Fehler

Knowledge of changes in reservoir properties resulting from extracting hydrocarbons or injecting fluid is critical to future production planning. Full-waveform inversion (FWI) of time-lapse seismic data provides a quantitative approach to characterize the changes by taking the difference of the inverted baseline and monitor models. The baseline and monitor data sets can be inverted either independently or jointly. Time-lapse seismic data collected by ocean-bottom cables (OBCs) in the Valhall field in the North Sea are suitable for such time-lapse FWI practice because the acquisitions are of a long offset, and the surveys are well-repeated. We have applied independent and joint FWI schemes to two time-lapse Valhall OBC data sets, which were acquired 28 months apart. The joint FWI scheme is double-difference waveform inversion (DDWI), which inverts differenced data (the monitor survey subtracted by the baseline survey) for model changes. We have found that DDWI gave a cleaner and more easily interpreted image of the reservoir changes compared with that obtained with the independent FWI schemes. A synthetic example is used to demonstrate the advantage of DDWI in mitigating spurious estimates of property changes and to provide cross validations for the Valhall data results.


2020 ◽  
Vol 224 (1) ◽  
pp. 306-311
Author(s):  
Dirk Philip van Herwaarden ◽  
Michael Afanasiev ◽  
Solvi Thrastarson ◽  
Andreas Fichtner

SUMMARY We present a new approach to full-waveform inversion (FWI) that enables the assimilation of data sets that expand over time without the need to reinvert all data. This evolutionary inversion rests on a reinterpretation of stochastic Limited-memory Broyden–Fletcher–Goldfarb–Shanno (L-BFGS), which randomly exploits redundancies to achieve convergence without ever considering the data set as a whole. Specifically for seismological applications, we consider a dynamic mini-batch stochastic L-BFGS, where the size of mini-batches adapts to the number of sources needed to approximate the complete gradient. As an illustration we present an evolutionary FWI for upper-mantle structure beneath Africa. Starting from a 1-D model and data recorded until 1995, we sequentially add contemporary data into an ongoing inversion, showing how (i) new events can be added without compromising convergence, (ii) a consistent measure of misfit can be maintained and (iii) the model evolves over times as a function of data coverage. Though applied retrospectively in this example, our method constitutes a possible approach to the continuous assimilation of seismic data volumes that often tend to grow exponentially.


Author(s):  
Ehsan Jamali Hondori ◽  
Chen Guo ◽  
Hitoshi Mikada ◽  
Jin-Oh Park

AbstractFull-waveform inversion (FWI) of limited-offset marine seismic data is a challenging task due to the lack of refracted energy and diving waves from the shallow sediments, which are fundamentally required to update the long-wavelength background velocity model in a tomographic fashion. When these events are absent, a reliable initial velocity model is necessary to ensure that the observed and simulated waveforms kinematically fit within an error of less than half a wavelength to protect the FWI iterative local optimization scheme from cycle skipping. We use a migration-based velocity analysis (MVA) method, including a combination of the layer-stripping approach and iterations of Kirchhoff prestack depth migration (KPSDM), to build an accurate initial velocity model for the FWI application on 2D seismic data with a maximum offset of 5.8 km. The data are acquired in the Japan Trench subduction zone, and we focus on the area where the shallow sediments overlying a highly reflective basement on top of the Cretaceous erosional unconformity are severely faulted and deformed. Despite the limited offsets available in the seismic data, our carefully designed workflow for data preconditioning, initial model building, and waveform inversion provides a velocity model that could improve the depth images down to almost 3.5 km. We present several quality control measures to assess the reliability of the resulting FWI model, including ray path illuminations, sensitivity kernels, reverse time migration (RTM) images, and KPSDM common image gathers. A direct comparison between the FWI and MVA velocity profiles reveals a sharp boundary at the Cretaceous basement interface, a feature that could not be observed in the MVA velocity model. The normal faults caused by the basal erosion of the upper plate in the study area reach the seafloor with evident subsidence of the shallow strata, implying that the faults are active.


2019 ◽  
Vol 16 (6) ◽  
pp. 1017-1031 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yong Hu ◽  
Liguo Han ◽  
Rushan Wu ◽  
Yongzhong Xu

Abstract Full Waveform Inversion (FWI) is based on the least squares algorithm to minimize the difference between the synthetic and observed data, which is a promising technique for high-resolution velocity inversion. However, the FWI method is characterized by strong model dependence, because the ultra-low-frequency components in the field seismic data are usually not available. In this work, to reduce the model dependence of the FWI method, we introduce a Weighted Local Correlation-phase based FWI method (WLCFWI), which emphasizes the correlation phase between the synthetic and observed data in the time-frequency domain. The local correlation-phase misfit function combines the advantages of phase and normalized correlation function, and has an enormous potential for reducing the model dependence and improving FWI results. Besides, in the correlation-phase misfit function, the amplitude information is treated as a weighting factor, which emphasizes the phase similarity between synthetic and observed data. Numerical examples and the analysis of the misfit function show that the WLCFWI method has a strong ability to reduce model dependence, even if the seismic data are devoid of low-frequency components and contain strong Gaussian noise.


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