Structurally Constrained Anisotropic Multi-Wave-Inversion Utilizing Machine Learning and Big Data on a Middle East OBC Project

Challenged by the presence of strong anisotropy and velocity reversal in the near-surface, we apply structurally constrained anisotropic Multi-Wave Inversion (MWI), over 1200 km2 of OBC data offshore Abu Dhabi. MWI aims at simultaneously inverting the P-wave first breaks (FB), the ground roll Dispersion Curves (DC) and the Vertical Two-Way Times (VTWT) of main interfaces. In this study, MWI is extended to invert for epsilon that is constrained by the FB and the VTWT. We highlight the importance of proper preconditioning of the DC and FB inputs using data mining tools when applying the method to a large production dataset.