Upgrading the CREWES Seismic Physical Modeling Facility

Joe Wong, Kevin L. Bertram, Kevin W. Hall

From 2008 to 2015, the CREWES Seismic Physical Modeling Facility utilized acquisition software and hardware that executed under the Windows XP operating system. With Windows XP no longer being supported, CREWES has taken the prudent step of upgrading software and hardware to be compatible with the replacement operating systems (i.e., Windows 7, 8, and/or 10). Also, the growing emphasis in industry on high-resolution 3D surveys motivated us to add capabilities enabling the completion of physically-modeled 3D surveys within reasonable time frames. To this end, we replaced the old single-channel A/D module with faster two- and eight-channel A/D modules. Employing multi-channel data acquisition as well as multiple source transducers firing simultaneously (supported by efficient post-survey deblending algorithms), the upgraded modeling facility is expected to be able to complete a 3D survey with over 10 million deblended seismograms within 240 hours.