We consider Velocity Model Building to be a key development direction for OpendTect. In Nov. 2008 we released the first commercial version of VMB and our goal is to continue building the next generation VMB software by continuously enhancing, improving and extending the software in a user-driven way.
To do this we have converted the PSDM-VMB consortium, which sponsored the initial development, into a VMB project, organized in a consortium style with an Advisory Board, Quality Assurance officer, Project Leader and Project Team. OpendTect VMB is developed in such a way that it can support multiple PSDM systems. Only a light interface needs to be developed to transfer velocity information from VMB to PSDM. All object classes needed to develop a link are Open Source.
All owners of a commercial license of VMB are offered a seat in the Advisory Board. The board advises on further developments and prioritizes development efforts. The budget for further development comes from VMB software sales and maintenance fees and from industry sponsored development projects. The latter form of funding has priority over other development efforts.
The VMB plugin is used for picking RMO velocities from pre-stack Common Image Gathers. RMO velocities are used to update the (3D) velocity model in PSDM work flows. VMB supports picking on semblance gathers and picking of pre-stack events for input to the PSDM-Tomographic plugin. Two VMB modules are supported: vertical update and horizon-consistent update. The actual creation of velocity models is performed in OpendTect Base. Models are constructed from combinations of gridded / smoothed RMO velocities, interval velocities and 3D body velocities.
VMB is designed to support multiple PSDM systems. All structures needed to interface a PSDM system to OpendTect VMB are released in the Open Source domain.
PSDM Kirchhoff migrates pre-stack Common Image Gathers in depth with a Kirchhoff migration algorithm. Outputs are PSDM migrated gathers and/or stacked volumes. Travel time tables are computed by 3D ray-tracing through the OpendTect supplied velocity model. PSDM Kirchhoff comes with a job-deck builder and a subset of the Ethos processing system, which is Geokinetics proprietary seismic processing system.
PSDM Tomography is a grid-based tomographic velocity update module. Inputs are a velocity model and picked pre-stack events from OpendTect - VMB. Output is the updated velocity model. The distribution of errors is controlled by the user via a quality volume that specifies the allowed variations. PSDM Tomography comes with the same intuitive job-deck builder as PSDM Kirchhoff and a subset of the Ethos processing system, which is Geokinetics proprietary seismic processing system.
We offer Velocity Model Building and QC of Velocity Models from pre-stack gathers as a service to the industry. This service includes re-migration with a Kirchhoff PSDM plugin and velocity updates with a Tomography plugin.
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