TestKIT

Millions of dollars are spent annually on contract geophysical data collection and analysis. Whether it is 2D or 3D, EM, MT, CSAMT, IP, gravity, magnetic or seismic data, it is well known that two contractors who are asked to interpret the same data will often come up with widely divergent geologic pictures. This is because geophysical data is notoriously noisy and ambiguous and many different geologic scenarios can be constructed to explain the same data.  The particular image a contractor chooses to present to a client may have as much (or perhaps more) to do with the contractor’s software, work flow and assumptions than it does with the rocks underground.  The client has the right to know and understand how that image is affected by uncertainty and what kinds of artifacts might be introduced by a specific contractor’s analysis.

TestKIT will solve this problem.  At the initiation of a TestKIT project, one of our geophysicists will work directly with a client for a few hours to develop a geological mock-up of a survey which is going up for bid or for which data has already been collected.  Our statisticians will then create a suite of approximately 20 statistically significant different models based on the mock-up.   This Sample Suite will be sent to the various contractors bidding on a job.  The contractors will be asked to use their in-house software to create synthetic data from the sample models and then recreate an underground image as if the synthetic data were real data.  We will apply mathematics and sampling theory to the results to generate a report detailing the amount and type of uncertainty which the client can expect will be introduced into geologic interpretations of data produced by the contractor.   If data collection has yet to be performed, the report will also include the maximum allowable signal to noise and experimental error. The TestKIT service can also be used to test array configurations for any geophysical technique or to add Uncertainty Quantification to existing data.

A small upfront investment in TestKIT could potentially save hundreds of thousands of misspent dollars on geophysical data and analysis.  Not only can it tell a client which potential contractor is best equipped to interpret the data from a geophysical survey, but it can give guidelines for accomplishing the survey with optimal equipment configurations and noise levels.  Perhaps even more meaningfully, it will give a direct indication of whether the survey is worth undertaking at all.  It is possible that a desired target is not resolvable using any means.  And, given that the survey is undertaken, TestKIT will give reliable bounds on the results, ensuring that drilling and exploration decisions are based on real geology, not processing artifacts. 

TestKIT is being developed under the umbrella of Chatelet Resources LLC, a company which specializes in finding physics-based statistical solutions to high value problems.