Complementary Use of FWI in Earth Model Building Workflows in Complex Media

Abstract

Summary Over the last 10 years, full-waveform inversion (FWI) established itself as an integral part of modern Earth model building (EMB) workflows. Recently, the industry witnessed the introduction of many types of FWI, differing either by the portion of the wavefield used in the inversion or by the nature of the objective function. We discuss the importance of different types of FWI in EMB workflows designed to address specific imaging challenges and achieve given interpretation objectives. We demonstrate the effects on model quality and project turn-around time from the complementary use of FWI in complex media, together with common image point Tomography (with or without borehole seismic constraints), salt geometry scenarios and extensive use of geologic constraints.