Upscaling Extent vs. Information Loss in Reservoir Upscaling

Abstract

Upscaling has become an increasingly important tool in recent years for converting highly detailed geological models of a reservoir to simulation grids. The main idea of upscaling is to replace a number of heterogeneous fine grid blocks with one equivalent coarse homogeneous grid block. The common method of upscaling is to replace more than one different value with an effective one. So, the essence of upscaling is averaging. It goes without saying that some information loss in upscaling is inevitable. Studies show that upscaling extent (UE) has a strong positive correlation with information loss. So, in reservoir upscaling, large UE should try to be avoided, especially greater than 0.4.