Distinguished Lecturer, Spring 2009

Years of seismic specialization among practicing geophysicists have segregated acquisition, processing, and interpretation into separate functions, which makes it difficult for any individual to treat the whole seismic process as a single integrated system.

From experience, I have developed a sometimes elegant, occasionally cumbersome, but always effective methodology which assimilates the tasks of acquisition design, seismic processing, and interpretation into one coordinated procedure. Decisions regarding acquisition parameters, survey geometry, and processing flow must be driven by interpretation requirements. These choices are guided by analysis of acquisition and processing tests applied to existing data sets rather than the more common practice of simply replicating the parameters used on previous surveys.

This lecture will impart a concise but comprehensive introduction to the art of seismic design, data processing, and imaging with the overall goal of forging a unified system for the sole purpose of producing optimized products for pre- and poststack interpretation and attribute extraction. The lecture format will present cutting-edge case histories exposing both the philosophy underlying the whole process, as well as the specific strategy and tactical implementation of design and processing techniques used to achieve the interpretation goals.