Unfolding Vulcan plans

Thursday, December 9th, 2010


A seminar in October in Perth highlighted new approaches in Vulcan to handle structurally deformed stratigraphic deposits.

Anisotropy in a deposit refers to an attribute having variable continuity in different directions. If the direction and magnitude of anisotropy are well understood not only globally but also locally, they can be taken into account to improve modelling.

Traditional interpolation techniques, such as inverse distance or kriging consider only simple global anisotropy scenarios, and thus cannot capture the continuity or otherwise of complex deformed deposits. It follows that more geologically realistic results can be obtained by considering local variations in anisotropy.

Maptek has initiated the development of a new unfolding method to account for these variations. The project status was tabled at the seminar and feedback was sought to incorporate customer suggestions in the new tool, which will be introduced in a future version of Vulcan.

‘The seminar was a great opportunity for face-to-face discussion. Customer needs must guide product development. There is no point in designing software in a vacuum’, said Mike Husbands, Technical Services Manager, Western Australia.



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