Abstract: There is provided herein a method of passive seismic acquisition that utilizes real time or near real time computation to reduce the volume of data that must be moved from the field to the processing center. Much of the computation that is traditionally applied to passive source data can be done in a streaming fashion. The raw data that passes through a field system can be processed in manageable pieces, after which the original data can be discarded and the intermediate results accumulated and periodically saved. These saved intermediate results are at least two, more likely three, orders of magnitude smaller than the raw data they are derived from. Such a volume of data is trivial to store, transport or transmit, allowing passive seismic acquisition to be practically used for continuous near-real-time seismic surveillance.

Abstract: One aspect of the invention is a method for building geologic/stratigraphic models of the earth for the purposes of numerical simulations of phenomena of interest, such as seismic wave propagation, or fluid flow, reservoir simulation, etc. An embodiment of the invention uses stochastic methods to create material property models that have desired statistical properties by numerically simulating deposition of geological layers. The method can create multiple material parameter models from numerical implementations of a variety of geological processes.

Abstract: One aspect of the invention is a method for building geologic/stratigraphic models of the earth for the purposes of numerical simulations of phenomena of interest, such as seismic wave propagation, or fluid flow, reservoir simulation, etc. An embodiment of the invention uses stochastic methods to create material property models that have desired statistical properties by numerically simulating deposition of geological layers. The method can create multiple material parameter models from numerical implementations of a variety of geological processes.

Abstract: There is provided herein a method of passive seismic acquisition that utilizes real time or near real time computation to reduce the volume of data that must be moved from the field to the processing center. Much of the computation that is traditionally applied to passive source data can be done in a streaming fashion. The raw data that passes through a field system can be processed in manageable pieces, after which the original data can be discarded and the intermediate results accumulated and periodically saved. These saved intermediate results are at least two, more likely three, orders of magnitude smaller than the raw data they are derived from. Such a volume of data is trivial to store, transport or transmit, allowing passive seismic acquisition to be practically used for continuous near-real-time seismic surveillance.

Abstract: According to a first preferred aspect of the instant invention, there is provided an efficient method of computing a 3D frequency domain waveform inversion based on 3D time domain modeling. In the preferred arrangement, 3D frequency domain wavefields are computed using 3D time-domain modeling and a discrete Fourier transformation that is preferably computed “on the fly” instead of solving the large systems of linear equations that have traditionally been required by direct frequency domain modeling. The instant invention makes use of the theory of gradient-based waveform inversion that estimates model parameters (for example velocities) by matching modeled data to field data sets. Preferably the modeled data are calculated using a forward modeling algorithm.

Abstract: According to a preferred aspect of the instant invention, there is provided a system and method for acquiring seismic data in a marine environment, wherein at least two source vessels are used in conjunction with a recording vessel which tows a plurality of hydrophone cables. Preferably, the source vessels will be positioned along side of the towed streamer configuration and most preferably one source vessel will be located near the recording vessel and the other at the end of the streamer configuration, preferably along the same side of the streamer configuration as the lead source vessel.