Tomographic Joint Inversion of Direct Arrivals, Primaries and Multiples for Monochannel Marine Surveys

Conventional multichannel surveys provide good images in 2D and 3D of the Earth in depth, which are successfully used for the oil and gas industries. However, their cost and environmental impact make them rarely affordable for engineering applications, especially for offshore infrastructures. In thi...

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Main Authors: Aldo Vesnaver, Luca Baradello
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: MDPI AG 2022-05-01
Series:Geosciences
Subjects:
Online Access:https://www.mdpi.com/2076-3263/12/6/219
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author Aldo Vesnaver
Luca Baradello
author_facet Aldo Vesnaver
Luca Baradello
author_sort Aldo Vesnaver
collection DOAJ
description Conventional multichannel surveys provide good images in 2D and 3D of the Earth in depth, which are successfully used for the oil and gas industries. However, their cost and environmental impact make them rarely affordable for engineering applications, especially for offshore infrastructures. In this case, monochannel systems, such as Boomers, having cables that are a few-meters long, provide time-domain images that are useful but miss relevant lithological information for engineers, such as the P-wave velocity of shallow layers. In this paper, we present a tomographic approach that exploits multiple reflections, in addition to primaries and direct arrivals, which work for monochannel surveys with a short offset. It can detect lateral variations of velocity and thickness of the first layer under the sea floor. Two complementary algorithms are compared: a pure tomographic inversion, and a tuning exploiting the classical Dix formula; the first one is more precise, while the second is more robust with respect to noise. A two-step inversion with incidence-angle parametrization performs slightly better than a single-step algorithm based on the direct traveltime inversion. We validate the method by synthetic and real data examples.
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spelling doaj.art-1865ee0bee0a443f95dcfc1141dc17842023-11-23T16:49:36ZengMDPI AGGeosciences2076-32632022-05-0112621910.3390/geosciences12060219Tomographic Joint Inversion of Direct Arrivals, Primaries and Multiples for Monochannel Marine SurveysAldo Vesnaver0Luca Baradello1Department of Geophysics, National Institute of Oceanography and Applied Geophysics—OGS, Borgo Grotta Gigante 42/c, 34010 Trieste, ItalyDepartment of Geophysics, National Institute of Oceanography and Applied Geophysics—OGS, Borgo Grotta Gigante 42/c, 34010 Trieste, ItalyConventional multichannel surveys provide good images in 2D and 3D of the Earth in depth, which are successfully used for the oil and gas industries. However, their cost and environmental impact make them rarely affordable for engineering applications, especially for offshore infrastructures. In this case, monochannel systems, such as Boomers, having cables that are a few-meters long, provide time-domain images that are useful but miss relevant lithological information for engineers, such as the P-wave velocity of shallow layers. In this paper, we present a tomographic approach that exploits multiple reflections, in addition to primaries and direct arrivals, which work for monochannel surveys with a short offset. It can detect lateral variations of velocity and thickness of the first layer under the sea floor. Two complementary algorithms are compared: a pure tomographic inversion, and a tuning exploiting the classical Dix formula; the first one is more precise, while the second is more robust with respect to noise. A two-step inversion with incidence-angle parametrization performs slightly better than a single-step algorithm based on the direct traveltime inversion. We validate the method by synthetic and real data examples.https://www.mdpi.com/2076-3263/12/6/219tomographymultiple reflectionsoffshore engineeringBoomerseafloor characterizationP velocity
spellingShingle Aldo Vesnaver
Luca Baradello
Tomographic Joint Inversion of Direct Arrivals, Primaries and Multiples for Monochannel Marine Surveys
Geosciences
tomography
multiple reflections
offshore engineering
Boomer
seafloor characterization
P velocity
title Tomographic Joint Inversion of Direct Arrivals, Primaries and Multiples for Monochannel Marine Surveys
title_full Tomographic Joint Inversion of Direct Arrivals, Primaries and Multiples for Monochannel Marine Surveys
title_fullStr Tomographic Joint Inversion of Direct Arrivals, Primaries and Multiples for Monochannel Marine Surveys
title_full_unstemmed Tomographic Joint Inversion of Direct Arrivals, Primaries and Multiples for Monochannel Marine Surveys
title_short Tomographic Joint Inversion of Direct Arrivals, Primaries and Multiples for Monochannel Marine Surveys
title_sort tomographic joint inversion of direct arrivals primaries and multiples for monochannel marine surveys
topic tomography
multiple reflections
offshore engineering
Boomer
seafloor characterization
P velocity
url https://www.mdpi.com/2076-3263/12/6/219
work_keys_str_mv AT aldovesnaver tomographicjointinversionofdirectarrivalsprimariesandmultiplesformonochannelmarinesurveys
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