Calibration of categorical simulations by evolutionary gradual deformation method

Abstract

Methods to simulate facies (or categorical) fields are numerous. However, calibration of simulated facies fields to large-scale or dynamic data still remains an important challenge due to the discrete nature of the fields, the non-linearity of the response with respect to the facies fields, and the non-derivability of the objective function used in calibration. A new gradual deformation method (GDM) is presented and tested for the calibration of facies realizations obtained by patch-multipoint simulation (MPS). The proposed method borrows ideas from pluriGaussian simulation, evolutionary algorithms, and GDM. Various test cases are considered: proportion maps, section of seismic amplitudes, inlet to outlet travel time along the shortest path, and water-cut curves obtained with a flow simulator. Both conditional/unconditional MPS simulations and 2D/3D problems are considered. In all studied test cases, the new GDM approach has provided excellent calibration to the target variables. The method is general as it can be used in conjunction with any facies simulator.