Deep Bayesian Neural Networks for Fault Identification and Uncertainty Quantification

Summary The interpretation of faults within a geological basin or reservoir from seismic data is a time-consuming, and often manual task associated with high uncertainties. Recently, numerous approaches using machine learning, especially various types of convolutional neural networks, have been presented to automate the process of identifying fault planes within seismic images, which have been shown to outperform traditional fault detection techniques. While these proposed methods show good performance, many of these approaches do not allow investigation of the associated uncertainties that arise in the fault identification process. In this study, we present an application of Bayesian deep convolutional neural networks for identifying faults within seismic datasets. Using an approximate Bayesian inference method a Bayesian deep neural network was trained on a large dataset of synthetic faulted seismic images. The model is then applied to a benchmark dataset and a real data case from NW shelf Australia to identify fault planes, and to investigate the associated uncertainty in the predictive distribution.