Special Issue on 20 Years of Multiple-Point Statistics: Part 1

Abstract

2013 was the 20th anniversary of the first multiple-point statistics (MPS) simulation method,whichwas published in the seminal paper ofGuardiano and Srivastava (1993), under the impulsion ofAndre Journel at StanfordUniversity, Stanford, California, who fathered the MPS concept and nurtured its development (Journel 1993; Journel and Zhang 2006). This work led to a new research field that addressed geological realism in stochastic simulations of the underground. At that time in 1993, computational limitations made the proposedmethod impossible to apply in real situations. Nevertheless a pathway was open for a new way of thinking about geostatistics. Specifically, three radical innovations were brought forward into a global framework: (1) the concept of MPS instead of two point statistics, such as covariances or variograms to model complex patterns, (2) the necessity of using training images to derive the MPS and (3) the use of non-parametric statistics. It was only in 2002 that these ideas were developed to the point where they became fully applicable. An efficient algorithm (snesim), based on the single normal equation, was proposed by Strebelle (2002), again a student of Andre Journel. This paper was rapidly recognized by the community to be a major breakthrough. It received the prize of the best paper in Mathematical Geology for 2002. Currently, it is the second most cited paper of Mathematical Geosciences with 247 citations, just after a paper that is 10 years older by Noel Cressie.