Geological Society of America

T9 Geologic Carbon Storage

Sunday, 22 September 2024
8:00 AM - 12:00 PM
303A

DETECTING LOW-ANGLE FAULTS ON SEISMIC MIGRATION IMAGES USING NESTED RESIDUAL U-NET

Paper number: T9-6
Program: Technical Sessions
Time: 9:10 AM – 9:25 AM

Authors

Joseph McNease Presenting Author
Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, NM
Lianjie Huang
Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, NM
David Li
Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, NM
Kai Gao
Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, NM
Bailian Chen
Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, NM
Yingcai Zheng
University of Houston, Houston, TX
Nathan Moodie
Energy & Geoscience Institute, Salt Lake City, UT

Abstract

Detecting faults is crucial for site characterization and monitoring in geological carbon storage projects because faults can damage the integrity of natural seals that might cause CO2 leakage and induce seismicity. The robust automation for detection and segmentation of faults on seismic migration images is a rapidly developing technology and yet still poses many challenges. In particular, the lack of expertly interpreted fault volumes to use for training data requires the use of synthetic seismic images and fault labels. While the detection of high angle faults has been highly successful, low-angle normal and reverse faults are challenging to detect because of their large throws, variable angles, and rotational features. We generate synthetic seismic images as training data that incorporates high-, low-, and variable-angle fault features. We use these data to train a nested residual U-Net for fault detection and enhance its ability to detect variable dipping faults on seismic migration images. Additionally, we assess the ability of the network for varying noise levels, geological formation thickness, and seismic wavelet frequency. We use seismic migration images from Iron Mountain in Utah to verify the ability of the network to detect low-angle faults in addition to high-angle faults.

Geological Society of America Abstracts with Programs. Vol. 56, No. 5

doi: 10.1130/abs/2024AM-404956

© Copyright 2024 The Geological Society of America (GSA), all rights reserved. Permission is hereby granted to the author(s) of this abstract to reproduce and distribute it freely, for noncommercial purposes. Permission is hereby granted to any individual scientist to download a single copy of this electronic file and reproduce up to 20 paper copies for noncommercial purposes advancing science and education, including classroom use, providing all reproductions include the complete content shown here, including the author information. All other forms of reproduction and/or transmittal are prohibited without written permission from GSA Copyright Permissions.