On 15th August, ASEG and PESA WA Branches jointly hosted the 2018 SEG/AAPG Distinguished Lecturer Satish Singh on the topic of “Seismic Full Waveform Inversion for Fundamental Scientific and Industrial Problems”. This programme is supported through the SEG Foundation by PGS and Equinor (formely Statoil). Satish had visited Singapore, Indonesia, New Zealand and the eastern states of Australia before arriving in Perth.
The evening lecture was held at CGG ‘s ground floor function room and it kicked off with over 60 members, from various professional and academic backgrounds attending, socialising over food and beverages. ASEG and PESA WA presidents Heather Tompkins and Helen Debenham facilitated the event with the usual branch introductions before introducing Satish Singh.
Satish Singh is very well-respected in the field of seismology in both academia and the industry. His talk focused on explaining the concept of the seismic full waveform inversion from the very beginning before delving into its application to solve fundamental scientific problems.
Typically, we are used to seeing FWI applied to solve fairly shallow velocity structures in exploration for oil and gas, however Satish treated us to some examples of its application well outside the realms of our day to day scenarios. We looked at FWI applied over magma chambers and spreading ridges, helping us understand movements of magma, and even help predict eruptions. He showed us FWI performed deep into subduction zones, using super long offset data shot specifically for these scientific ends by PGS. Here the reach of the FWI model extended deep into the earth where it was able to pick up moho refractions, and possibly even deeper. The talk also investigated the possibility of 4D time-lapse FWI to see how the changing velocity structures can be identified on the timescale of a producing field, and potentially adding a new tool to the arsenal of field development tools.
We are grateful to SEG for enabling world class researchers like Satish to travel and give presentations, and it was encourage to see some of our more mathematically minded members attending.
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2018 SEG/AAPG Distinguished Lecturer in Perth
Posted by | 19/10/2018
