A Knowledge-driven Shared Earth Modeling Workflow for Seismic Interpretation and Structural Model Building

We have been claiming for several years that Shared Earth Modeling should be “knowledge-driven”. This approach considers geology as a key knowledge to which all expert fields necessarily refer. According to this approach, a permanent link can be established at each stage of the modeling process between the various objects considered (seismic reflectors, well markers, geometrical surfaces) and the geological objects (GeologicalUnits, GeologicBoundaries) to which they have been associated thanks to geological interpretation. In this paper we explain how we formalize, populate, reuse, extract and exploit this knowledge for opening the communication between several processing stages (prospect initiation, well marker, seismic interpretation, structural modelling) and for offering the possibility of permanently completing and updating the various representations. This solution, based on a semantic approach, basically consists in formalizing knowledge attached to geological, seismic and well log data by means of Domain Ontologies, operating a knowledge based method for seismic interpretation and providing results allowing automated building of a structural model, opening the possibility of retrieving all useful information concerning the interpretations operated at the various stages of the modeling workflow by means of various knowledge management tools. This solution will be described in reference with a practical example.