Technical Committee Earth Sciences

Towards an Integrative Interpretation of Potential Fields and Corresponding Gradients by the Aid of Three-Dimensional Modelling and Visualization, TIPot3D

Today’s geophysical interpretation and surveying benefits heavily from integration of heterogeneous geological, geophysical and topographical data, including 3D seismic surveys and imaging, gradients of potential field (mostly aero- and/or satellite) observations, on-/offshore electro-magnetic surveys, borehole logs and many others. The software needed for this task has to support the interpreter by providing appropriate functions:

According to the proposal, the aim of this project was, to develop algorithms and realize the necessary source program coding in Java for
- The magnetic field respectively its gradients of induced and remanent magnetization
- The regional stress field and the gravitational potential energy (GPE)
- Potential field (gravity and magnetic) borehole data
- Immersive visualization of even complicated geological structures.

The basic software for 3D potential field modelling including 3D visualization already exists, so that the new functionality will be developed as new plugins for the existing program. New algorithms and new software has to be tested using an appropriate test case. The initial plan was to use the NW German basin, but after extensive discussions with the industry partners this plan was changed to two different target areas:
- The German Continental Deep Drilling borehole (KTB), and a
- Local salt structures in the Gifhorn Trough.