Visualization of geological prospecting data

Abstract

Oil reservoirs searching is based on several exploratory methods, which produce a large quantity of data that must be interpreted and analyzed by geologists. Graphic systems can help these tasks by providing three-dimensional representations to convey information in a more natural and efficient way to the users. Therefore, they are typical scientific visualization applications. This paper presents results from work on the development of interactive visualization tools for the analysis of geological data obtained from well samples. Since these data are essentially scattered, interpolation techniques are required to the creation of geological models. The system provides a data base management system for storing information used by both interpolation and visualization modules. The modified Shepard interpolation method was implemented and some improvements were made to generate more accurate results in sparsely sampled regions. The visualization module uses the Visualization Toolkit (VTK) to create images showing geological layers as three-dimensional surfaces with attributes mapped to colors and isocontour maps.