Visual Exploration of High - dimensional Oil and Gas

Many processes within the oil and gas domain deal with ‘big data’–large sets of multidimensional data. Effectively analyzing these data sets is crucial to understanding the structure and the be­ haviour of oil and gas fields, and to the optimization of hydrocarbons production. However, experts face many challenges while attempting to analyze these data sets due to their high dimensionality, the inherent uncertainty of the data, and the lack of effective visual analytic interactive tools. In this thesis, we attempt to look for new ways to support domain experts in interpreting high dimensional oil and gas data. For the exploration we designed, implemented and evaluated two new interactive visualization tools: FractVis and PetroVis. Our design efforts involved character­ ization of two oil and gas domain case studies, namely: microseismic monitoring (in the design of FractVis) and petrographic analysis (in the design of PetroVis). For each of the case studies, we outline the necessary tasks, needs, and the challenges faced by the domain experts. By closely collaborating with domain experts we iteratively designed, implemented, and evaluated the two interactive novel visualization systems to simplify the exploration of high dimensional domain data. FractVis is a visualization tool aimed at supporting the visual analysis and exploration of the microseismic monitoring data. It combines, extends, and synchronizes parallel coordinates repre­ sentation with other visualizations and interactions in order to facilitate the visual correlation of the data attributes. FractVis was further expanded by integrating new proxemic interaction and an interactive painting metaphor to simplify navigation and manipulation of the 3D microseismic data. The findings of our preliminary evaluation of FractVis suggest that the tool can provide in­ sight regarding the simplification of the correlation of the microseismic data attributes, as detailed in the thesis. PetroVis is a novel interactive visualization system developed for exploring petrographic data. PetroVis integrates interactive visualization elements with domain-specific statistical features, to