Earth Science and Engineering Graduate Program

Speaker: Professor Eric Verschuur, Physics Department, Delft University of Technology (DUT).

Abstract

The application field for seismic imaging is shifting from the traditional hydro-carbon exploration and monitoring towards other applications, such as near-surface characterization, geothermal exploration, monitoring of CO2 and H2 storage. In all these applications, the ‘business model’ is quite different, resulting in smaller acquisition budgets. In the era of hydrocarbon exploration, there has been a tendency for expanding number of channels within seismic acquisition, while the new application fields should aim at getting more information from less measurements. Therefore, it becomes increasingly important to use all of the information embedded in the seismic data. One of those aspects is to use all multiple scattering as signal rather than noise, as they contain illuminations that may not be present in the traditionally used primary reflections. This requires full wavefield technologies to utilize all of this information. In addition, Machine Learning technologies can further help in reducing data acquisition requirements. In this presentation some of these applications will be demonstrated.

Bio

Dirk J. (Eric) Verschuur (born in 1964) received his M.Sc. degree in 1986 and his Ph.D degree (honors) in 1991 from Delft University of Technology (DUT), both in applied physics. 

His Ph.D. thesis focused on the surface-related multiple elimination (SRME) methodology. Currently, he is an associate professor at the DUT, within the Imaging Physics department. Since 2016 he is the Program director of the Delphi research consortium, which is currently sponsored by 20 companies that are mostly active within the energy market. Within Delphi research is carried in the area of geo-imaging since the early 1980’s. His main interests are wavefield modeling, data processing, imaging and inversion techniques. 

In 1997 he received SEG’s J. Clarence Karcher award and in 2006 he was awarded with the Virgil Kauffman Gold medal from the SEG. He has been selected as the EAGE lecturer for the Education tour 2006 with a one-day course on multiple removal.