Automated Real Time Path Planning for Land Seismic Survey Field Design

Ideal survey designs provide evenly sampled data complying with predefined specifications in terms of offset and azimuth distributions, as well as fold and trace density. Orthogonal geometries are conventionally preferred but frequently difficult to implement in the field. Geographic, topological and environmental factors may limit the practical implementation of traditional designs and ad-hoc adjustments may be necessary during operations. Restricted or inaccessible areas and obstacles in the field are, in fact, not uncommon and potentially result in poor coverage.

This abstract presents two automated approaches to land vibroseis survey design that guarantee adequate survey attributes and avoid spatial discontinuities in the recorded data, even where adverse field conditions are present. The two methods are based on the reorganization of regular (centralized) and irregular (decentralized) source acquisition grids, respectively. Both methods provide a practical acquisition pre-plan for seismic crews. We tested these techniques on a real terrain map featured by a substantial amount of inaccessible areas due to the presence of steep sand dunes.

The focus of this study is on the source geometry. On the receiver side, the survey geometry is assumed not to be affected by the presence of the obstacles. This is the case in most practical applications.