oa Geophysical Simulations and Inversions with SimPEG

Solving a geophysical inverse problem and obtaining a meaningful result that can be interpreted in the context of the geologic question being asked requires bringing together numerical tools for solving partial differential equations, selecting a regularization functional, defining an optimization problem, and specifying tuning parameters and heuristics for performing the optimization. All of these choices are what make an inversion work (or not) in practice. These are captured in the software that implements an inversion approach. Open-source, community-driven software development offers a paradigm for collaborating on, reproducing, extending, and distilling ideas that can be expressed in code. SimPEG is an example of a project and community that have adopted this model for the development of tools for solving geophysical inverse problems (https://simpeg.xyz). In this poster, we: (1) provide an overview of current functionality; (2) demonstrate its use through examples in mineral exploration, an environmental application in slope stability, and a humanitarian geophysics project for locating groundwater resources in Myanmar; and (3) discuss avenues for getting involved in using and contributing to SimPEG.