Quantifying Geotechnical Properties and Mapping Geo-Hazards through UHRS Pre-Stack Inversion for an Energy Island Construction

In the Danish North Sea, the construction of an energy island was planned around 100 km west of the Danish coastline ( Figure 1 ). With energy islands, the idea is that wind turbines can be placed further away from the coast and distribute the power they generate between several countries more efficiently.

To address and quantify the potential risks associated with settlements beneath a planned site for the energy island, a 2D seismic survey was conducted. The collected seismic data, along with geotechnical information and deep borehole data, were utilized for a comprehensive geotechnical quantitative interpretation analysis. The primary focus was on quantifying deformation and elastic soil parameters of the sedimentary layers spanning from the seabed to the Top Chalk surface. Besides this a mapping of soil classes and pore pressure were performed. Synthetic CPT’s were estimated from the UHRS to validate the results against ground truth measurements.