A theory for seismic interpretation

Integration of geophysics and geology becomes more and more important. On the one hand the number and the variety of data that are available is increasing, On the other hand there exists nowadays a great number of techniques that contributes to the imaging of (complex) subsurfaces: III geophysics e.g. travel time inversion, prestack timeor depth migration, forward modelling techniques and in the geological domain geological modelling methods and reconstruction techniques. A problem that is not yet solved is the integrated use of all these possibilities and the integration of knowledge from one domain in the other domain. It can be foreseen that this is needed in the near future otherwise many of the sophisticated tools will be too restricted in their application. Integration can only be reached when its methodology is well defined. To these ends, this paper provides the results of epistemological study of the process of seismic interpretation. A generally applicable reasoning scheme is presented, which allows integration of all types of available information. The scheme was tested using the results of a case study on real data (Jacobs and Jardin 1991). The example shows the feasibility of the approach. This methodology makes the integration of geology and geophysics practicable.