(An)Elastic Modeling As a Tool to Understand Seismic Data in Complex Environments

Recent developments in computer hardware and software have increasingly enabled large-scale 3D elastic and anelastic modeling, creating a range of new possibilities. Such 3D modeling capabilities can provide the necessary benchmarks and input datasets to generally further work on shear waves or noise characterization, which comes with the desire to capture and more accurately describe the characteristics of 3D wave propagation in a solid earth. Furthermore, these capabilities can be helpful in allowing a more thorough analysis of the benefit obtained from shear waves and converted waves before beginning a survey. Doing so overcomes historic limitations in survey evaluation and design for multicomponent seismic, which capitalizes on ray tracing and is still largely confined to binning, fold, and illumination analysis. The data value proposition can now be efficiently pinned down to individual aspects of the processing flow as well as their combination with the acquisition configuration. Examples are provided from the SEAM II arid land modeling effort as well as from industry studies.