Geophysical Exploration of the Subsurface with HPC
By: Dr. Josep de la Puente from Barcelona Supercomputing Center
Modern-day exploration of geological resources (hydrocarbons, minerals, geothermal energy,...) relies in sending coherent energy to the subsurface and collecting back the energy scattered by deep geological structures. This incoherent energy, recorded with high-density sampling, is then transformed into detailed 3D pictures of the Earth's interior by means of physics-driven wavefield simulations. Such simulations, both forward and inverse, are among the largest computational efforts in the industry nowadays. I will give an overview of the mathematical, physical and computational approaches which are fundamental to the success of the exploratory efforts.