On the visualization of 3D geological models and their uncertainty

Björn Zehner. ( 2019 )
in: 2019 Ring Meeting, ASGA

Abstract

3D Visualization is important in order to communicate to customers and stakeholders or to the public the 3D geological models generated. Depending on the anticipated audience, the visualization should be presented in such a way that is easy to understand and intuitive. While this might be worth a discussion in its own right, the issue becomes even more complicated when not only the model itself needs to be shown, but also the certainty with which the subsurface is known. As part of a work package within the GeoERA - 3DGEO-EU project, different options to visualize this uncertainty are evaluated, and example data sets and workflows explaining the use of the suggested methods for 3D geological models will be provided in the near future. We will discuss different visualization options for certain geological models which are part of the standard geological modelling packages, such as Gocad or Petrel, and discuss some problems that arise with the different visualizations. We will than show how this visualization might be improved and be easier to understand by using volume visualization, a technique that is common in medical visualization and for the visualization of 3D seismic data, but less commonly used for 3D geological models. Further we will discuss how we could augment the 3D geological model shown with the information on how certain the position and orientation of a particular structural feature is. Using example data sets that we have generated and preprocessed using Skua-Gocad, we will explain the workflow and discuss the different options and problems to generate such visualizations.

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BibTeX Reference

@inproceedings{ZehnerRM2019,
 abstract = { 3D Visualization is important in order to communicate to customers and stakeholders or to the public the 3D geological models generated. Depending on the anticipated audience, the visualization should be presented in such a way that is easy to understand and intuitive. While this might be worth a discussion in its own right, the issue becomes even more complicated when not only the model itself needs to be shown, but also the certainty with which the subsurface is known. As part of a work package within the GeoERA - 3DGEO-EU project, different options to visualize this uncertainty are evaluated, and example data sets and workflows explaining the use of the suggested methods for 3D geological models will be provided in the near future. We will discuss different visualization options for certain geological models which are part of the standard geological modelling packages, such as Gocad or Petrel, and discuss some problems that arise with the different visualizations. We will than show how this visualization might be improved and be easier to understand by using volume visualization, a technique that is common in medical visualization and for the visualization of 3D seismic data, but less commonly used for 3D geological models. Further we will discuss how we could augment the 3D geological model shown with the information on how certain the position and orientation of a particular structural feature is. Using example data sets that we have generated and preprocessed using Skua-Gocad, we will explain the workflow and discuss the different options and problems to generate such visualizations. },
 author = { Zehner, Björn },
 booktitle = { 2019 Ring Meeting },
 publisher = { ASGA },
 title = { On the visualization of 3D geological models and their uncertainty },
 year = { 2019 }
}