Fast Bayesian Inversion of Airborne Electromagnetic Data Based on the Invertible Neural Network

Abstract

The inversion of airborne electromagnetic (AEM) data suffers from severe non-uniqueness of the solution. Bayesian inference provides the means to estimate structural uncertainty with a rich suite of statistical information. However, conventional Bayesian methods are computationally demanding in nonlinear inversions, especially considering the huge volumes of observational data, and thus are not feasible in practice. In this study, we develop a fast Bayesian inversion operator based on the invertible neural network (INN) to fully explore the posterior distribution and quantitatively evaluate the model uncertainty. The INN uses a latent variable to capture the information loss during measurement and constructs bijective mappings between AEM data and the resistivity model. We also introduce another noise variable into the INN to account for data uncertainties. Synthetic tests demonstrate that the INN can effectively recover the posterior distribution by a relatively small ensemble of predicted resistivity models whose AEM responses show a significant agreement with the true signal. We also apply the INN inversion operator to a field data set and obtain results consistent with previous studies. The INN shows considerable adaptability to field observations and strong noise robustness. Meanwhile, the INN delivers the inversion result with posterior model distribution for 23366 AEM time series in 20 seconds on a common PC. The inversion efficiency can be further improved for large data set due to its natural parallelizability. The proposed INN method can support fast Bayesian inversion of AEM data and offer tremendous potential for near real-time uncertainty evaluation of underground structures.