Oddysee of a project

Settling on a project I had intended to implement Bill Symes (cite) Differential Semblance Optimization for plane wave estimation. I abandoned the project, since Symes approach is an inversion problem and has no intrinsic relation to wave propagation. As Symes emphasizes in his paper, the inversion approach is applicable for any multi-experiment data fitting. The physical process underlying the experiment is irrelevant. Plane wave estimation is just one example. Furthermore, the implementation proved more difficult than I had assumed.

In search of a new topic, I considered the approximation of the Zoeppritz equation for reflected and transmitted waves. The topic fitted the course, a former professor of mine, Dr. Bortfeld, wrote a classic paper  on the topic, and industry interest in AVO may benefit me later. However, I was not enthused by an entirely theoretical paper (even if it were to include a few Mathematica figures). Ultimately, I decided to approach a more applied angle of the AVO and Zoeppritz problem.

Professor Horne's presentation on estimating reservoir parameters from seismic and well data lead to my attempt to integrate the experiments of the petroleum engineer and the geophysicist in a single formulation. I especially intended to incorporate the seismic raw data rather than the interpreted seismic events.