Weighted-average time-lapse full-waveform inversion for monitoring the subsurface.

What is it about?

Monitoring the subsurface is of great importance for managing reservoirs in the oil industry and for CO2 storage. Time-lapse full-waveform inversion (TL-FWI) is an effective tool for monitoring the subsurface. Changes in the earth’s properties are typically small in terms of magnitude and spatial extent and different strategies have been proposed to make TL-FWI more suitable for monitoring the subsurface. In this study, we proposed the weighted-average TL-FWI (WA). Compared with different methods such as cascaded, cross-updating, central-difference, and simultaneous inversion, we show that the WA provides the best compromise between the computation time and accuracy.

Featured Image

Photo by Marek Piwnicki on Unsplash

Photo by Marek Piwnicki on Unsplash

Why is it important?

1. The computation time of this method is less than other methods with comparable accuracy. 2. This method also provides information about time-lapse artifacts.