Full waveform inversion

Full waveform inversion (FWI) aims to extract full information contained in observed seismic waveforms (including reflection, refraction and converted waves) in order to estimate subsurface properties accurately. Although the FWI of wide-angle data using acoustic approximation in the frequency domain are carried out by different groups in the world, GPX (earlier LITHOS) FWI group has continued to follow the original idea of Professor Tarantola (ex-IPGP), the founding father of the FWI, and has been developing the FWI full elastic media in the time domain, both for modelling and inversion, and inverting both seismic reflection and refraction data. Until now, we have developed 2D and 3D elastic FWI and have applied to surface seismic and OBS data, and are currently developing visco-elastic, anisotropic and 3D injected grid FWI. GPX is not only developing theoretical tools but also applying this novel technology to long-streamer data acquired by industrial partners and challenging fundamental geophysical problems such as subduction and magmatic processes, attracting broad range of Ph.D. students, and creating healthy intellectual environments. The future FWI projects will include the inversion of anisotropic parameters, density, attenuation, and joint inversion of seismic and EM data.

Contact: Singh, Fuji, Vilotte