S U M M A R Y We discuss two types of physical constraints derived from thermodynamics that can be applied during seismic inversions. The first constraint involves assimilating heat-flow measurements in seismic inversions. This can improve seismic models beneath continents, particularly beneath cratons and continental platforms where uncertainties in crustal radioactive heat production and the ...

We proposed an economic, cost-constrained optimal design of a water distribution system (WDS) that maximizes seismic reliability while satisfying pressure constraints. The model quantifies the seismic reliability of a WDS through a series of procedures: stochastic earthquake generation, seismic intensity attenuation, determination of the pipe failure status (normal, leakage, and breakage), pipe...

A common problem in seismic tomography is the inadequate amount of data required for accurate traveltime inversion. The inherent nature in which data is acquired and the subsurface velocities of the survey area can result in a nonuniform distribution of raypaths. In such instances the statistical nature of tomographic inversion biases the solution to reflect the acquisition instead of the geolo...

Continuity along reflectors in seismic images is used via Curvelet representation to stabilize the convolution operator inversion. The Curvelet transform is a new multiscale transform that provides sparse representations for images that comprise smooth objects separated by piece-wise smooth discontinuities (e.g. seismic images). Our iterative Curvelet-regularized deconvolution algorithm combine...

Time-lapse seismic data are widely used for monitoring subsurface changes. A quantitative assessment of how reservoir properties have changed allows for better interpretation of fluid substitution and migration during processes like oil and gas production, and carbon sequestration. Full waveform inversion has been proposed as a way to retrieve quantitative estimates of subsurface properties thr...

Missing trace reconstruction is a challenge in seismic processing due to incomplete and irregular acquisition. Noise is a concern, due to the many sources of noise that occur during seismic acquisition. Most of the recent research on denoising and interpolation focuses on transform domain approaches using L1 norm minimization. A specific kind of constraint, called the synthesis approach, is wid...

The main objective of this work is to present a new methodology for seismic reservoir characterization that provides fine-scaled reservoir models of facies and reservoir properties, such as porosity, net-to-gross, and, possibly, fluid saturation. The proposed iterative methodology is based on sequential simulations of discrete variables, namely sequential indicator simulation, and a stochastic ...

We propose a methodology to propagate uncertainties in seismic pore pressure prediction using a 3-D Probabilistic Mechanical Earth Model (P-MEM). An extended form of Bowers formula is used to link pore pressure to seismic velocity, overburden stress, porosity and clay volume. Probability Distribution Functions (PDFs) for all input variables are stored as attributes in the 3-D MEM. An output PDF...

Crustal thickness is a critical parameter for understanding the processes of continental rifting and breakup and the evolution of petroleum systems within passive margins. However, direct measurements of crustal thickness are sparse and expensive, highlighting the need for methodologies using gravity anomaly data, jointly with other geophysical data, to estimate crustal thickness. We evaluated ...

Waveform (output least squares) inversion of seismic reflection data can reconstruct remarkably detailed models of subsurface structure, and take into account essentially any physics of seismic wave propagation that can be modeled. However the waveform inversion objective has many spurious local minima, hence convergence of descent methods (mandatory because of problem size) to useful Earth mod...