Unsupervised Deep Learning for Rapid Subsurface Interface Identification
using Geophysical Measurements
Abstract
Delineating subsurface interfaces is a crucial step in site selection
and characterization for various subsurface applications, such as the
geologic carbon sequestration, the radioactive waste disposal and
hydrocarbon exploration and production. 3D seismic surveys are widely
used for identifying subsurface interfaces and geologic features. Due to
the large volumes and the complexity of seismic data, manual
interpretation of subsurface interfaces is extremely time-consuming and
the interpretation results can be greatly affected by the subjectivity
of a particular interpreter. With the latest advances in deep neural
networks (DNNs), automatic seismic interpretation methods based on DNNs
emerged. Most of the DNN-based seismic interpretation methods are
supervised learning methods, which require large amount of labeled data
for network training. We have developed an unsupervised learning method
with deep fully convolutional networks (FCNs) for rapid subsurface
interface identification based on self-learning algorithms, which does
not require manual data labeling and specific training datasets. The
characteristics of subsurface interfaces are represented as numerical
constraints added to the specially designed loss function for
constructing the FCN model. Application of the unsupervised learning
method on a real seismic dataset collected at a potential CO2 storage
site demonstrates that the proposed method yields rapid and accurate
identification of subsurface interfaces with relatively strong acoustic
impedance contrast in seismic images. The proposed approach may assist
in automatic subsurface interface identification in real time and
facilitate building geological models for subsurface applications.