Inverting Near-Surface Absorption Bodies with FullWaveform Inversion: a Case Study from the North Viking Graben in the Northern North Sea

This work highlights visco-acoustic full-waveform inversion (Q-FWI) as a method for estimating high-resolution velocity and attenuation models. We present a very large, real data, case study where Q-FWI has been applied to ~36,000 km2 of 3D, narrow azimuth, variable-depth streamer data over the North Viking Graben region of the northern North Sea. The results show that Q-FWI can invert for both velocity and attenuation with a high degree of spatial and vertical resolution. Our visco-acoustic FWI results, in comparison to those from conventional acoustic FWI, are supported by superior imaging in an attenuation compensating pre-stack depth migration.