Why Use SVM?

SVM applications have been developed and based on some fundamental design principles:

Integration

Getting the best velocity models for depth imaging requires a combination of the right tools, a lot of data, and a mixture of interactive and batch processing steps.

SVM integrates the tools, the data, and both interactive and batch systems required to optimize the velocity model building workflow and the subsequent usage of this velocity model in various seismic imaging and reservoir applications.

The tools: From seismic interpretation through prestack or velocity picking, structural modeling, solid modeling, property population, tomography, domain conversion, and forward seismic modeling, to well mistie and well calibration; all the tools required by the imaging workflows have been redesigned to be controlled from a single environment and optimized to work together.

The data: From pre- and poststack seismic data and their attributes (e.g., dip field or coherency volumes) in time or in depth, to structural models, velocity models, tomographic updates and attributes (e.g., residual moveout volumes or illumination volumes), rays and wavefronts, to wells and other borehole information; all the data are accessed as geographical objects, and visualized and manipulated from the same graphical environment.

The interactive/batch environment: SVM is a suite of interactive components with a seamless access not only to Omega data, but also to the Omega processing system for the computationally intensive batch processes such as the tomography or automatic prestack picking.

3D visualization and interactivity

Getting the best velocity models for depth imaging requires also a careful selection of the input data for each workflow step, a local adjustment of the results obtained by automatic interactive or batch processes, and the ability to take sound decisions whenever ambiguities or uncertainties arise.

This is why the primary working area for SVM is a 3D++ graphical display (actually one or several 3D++ canvases) where all the data (including extremely large prestack data volumes) can be displayed together and, if needed, edited locally to maintain global consistency. The "3D++" refers to the ability to visualize multidimensional data, like multiazimuthal prestack gathers (i.e., 5D data) or any other multidimensional panels, in their true geographical position. Moreover, there is full-volume common pre- and poststack seismic navigation together with velocity slices or any other attribute.

In addition, SVM provides interactive ray-tracing-based seismic modeling tools and domain conversion tools to allow simulation of several scenarios in case of ambiguous inversion results or poorly illuminated subsurface areas.

Geophysical and geological consistency

Finally, getting the best velocity models for depth imaging also requires maintaining consistency between all the data used to build the model, and between the data and the true Earth.

SVM combines advanced interpretation, modeling, inversion, and processing algorithms with geological rules to automatically build simple to very complex structural models and to populate the velocities into its layers. Geophysical rules are used for rigorous time to depth conversion (not vertical stretch) and consistency is maintained during the workflow and across workflows using the Shared Earth Model concept.

Flexibility

SVM allows our analysts great flexibility in the way imaging workflows are built, encouraging new and exciting ways to tackle your imaging problems. Users can select from a series of predefined model building workflows according to the subsurface complexity and input data available, or create and save new flows as required.