Validating Seismic Interpretations Using an Expert System Approach to Cross Section Restoration

KLIGFIELD, ROY, Geo-Logic Systems, Boulder, CO and University of Colorado, Boulder, CO, and SUSAN DORR, JAMES GEISER, and PETER GEISER, Geo-Logic Systems, Boulder, CO

The construction of geological cross sections using seismic, well, and map data and their subsequent restoration and balancing requires access to complex structural geology algorithms. Even when such software is user-friendly, the complexity of geological structures and the required knowledge base to operate such a program can inhibit the use of such software by the nonspecialist.

In order to open up the use of such software to the explorationist, we have implemented an expert system mode of operation of GEOSEC, an X-based application that runs in the Motif user environment on VMS and UNIX systems. Scenarios offer guidance and step-by-step instructions on how to execute major software functionality. Check-off boxes in a specific sequence provide a pathway through the data that ensures that it is in a form suitable for processing by the structural geology algorithms. Choices of geological significance are explained to the user, and a default choice recommended. A context-sensitive help system provides on-screen explanations of nomenclature, operations, and their geological significance.

We illustrate the application of the guided scenario approach to the validation of seismic interpretations from the Gulf of Mexico where the basin history is examined through the production of a sequence of decompacted and restored cross sections on successively deeper seismic marker horizons.

AAPG Search and Discovery Article #91004 © 1991 AAPG Annual Convention Dallas, Texas, April 7-10, 1991 (2009)