Estimation of reservoir properties from seismic data by smooth neural networks

The performance of traditional back-propagation networks for reservoir characterization in production settings has been inconsistent due to their normonotonous generalization, which necessitates extensive tweaking of their parameters in order to achieve satisfactory results and avoid overfitting the data. This makes the accuracy of these networks sensitive to the selection of the network parameters. We present an approach to estimate the reservoir rock properties from seismic data through the use of regularized back propagation networks that have inherent smoothness characteristics. This approach alleviates the nonmonotonous generalization problem associated with traditional networks and helps to avoid overfitting the data. We apply the approach to a 3D seismic survey in the Shedgum area of Ghawar field, Saudi Arabia, to estimate the reservoir porosity distribution of the Arab-D zone, and we contrast the accuracy of our approach with that of traditional back-propagation networks through cross-validation tests. The results of these tests indicate that the accuracy of our approach remains consistent as the network parameters are varied, whereas that of the traditional network deteriorates as soon as deviations from the optimal parameters occur. The approach we present thus leads to more robust estimates of the reservoir properties and requires little or no tweaking of the network parameters to achieve optimal results.