Optimization of Seismic Reconnaissance Surveys in Petroleum Exploration

The seismic reflection method employed in petroleum exploration is described, after which the problem of selecting the optimum cell size for a uniform rectangular seismic reconnaissance search pattern is stated in terms of elementary search theory. The search effectiveness for each pattern is estimated by a Monte Carlo approach due to the probabilistic nature of target geometry. The problem of allocating a limited amount of search effort to a number of regions to be searched simultaneously is formulated as a dynamic programming problem in which the decision variables are the search pattern parameters and the inter-shot point spacing along the survey lines. The approach is easily generalized so that pattern morphology and orientation also become decision variables.