A novel surrogate model with deep learning for predicting spacial-temporal pressure in coalbed methane reservoirs

Coalbed methane (CBM) is a vital unconventional energy resource, and predicting its spatiotemporal pressure dynamics is crucial for efficient development strategies. This paper proposes a novel deep learning–based data-driven surrogate model, AxialViT-ConvLSTM, which integrates AxialAttention Vision Transformer, ConvLSTM, and an enhanced loss function to predict pressure dynamics in CBM reservoirs. The results showed that the model achieves a mean square error of 0.003, a learned perceptual image patch similarity of 0.037, a structural similarity of 0.979, and an R² of 0.982 between predictions and actual pressures, indicating excellent performance. The model also demonstrates strong robustness and accuracy in capturing spatial–temporal pressure features.