IPTC 10281

MuSE: A Multimodal Reservoir Simulation Environment

J.A. Pita, N.M. Al-Zamel, and A.H. Dogru, Saudi Aramco

Copyright 2005, International Petroleum Technology Conference

This paper was prepared for presentation at the International Petroleum Technology
Conference held in Doha, Qatar, 21–23 November 2005.
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Abstract
Today’s reservoir simulators handle millions of cells with fast
turnaround, providing large amounts of information that must
be analyzed quickly. High performance 3-D visualization may
not be sufficient to optimize the engineers’ productivity during
large-scale simulation studies.
A new environment integrating a voice advisory system
with “multi-modal” visualization has been built for our in-
house reservoir simulator. The new environment provides
stereo-capable 3-D visualization, force feedback via haptic
devices and sonification. Thus engineers can simultaneously
visualize oil saturation, hear changes in reservoir pressure and
feel rock permeability interactively as they move a 3-D mouse
throughout the reservoir.
Engineers can also provide operational and surveillance
rules so that the computer automatically checks conditions on
any variables. The system can take a number of actions, such
as using sound synthesis to speak directly to the engineer,
when these conditions occur. The system runs on a Windows
XP-based PC with dual cpus.
reservoir pressure and feel rock permeability interactively as
they move a 3-D mouse throughout the reservoir.
Engineers can also provide operational rules for checking
conditions on any variables. MuSE uses various means, such
as speech generation and pop-up messaging, to communicate
with the engineer when these conditions occur.
Multi-Modal Data Analysis
In contrast to conventional environments that provide only 3-
D visualization as the means for data interpretation and
analysis, MuSE uses two additional “channels” for sensorial
interaction: touch (haptics) and sound (sonification). Reservoir
simulation results that are loaded in MuSE can be attached to
one or more of these three channels.
The number of data volumes (i.e. simulation variables)
that can be loaded is limited only by the amount of
addressable system memory, but only three volumes can be
attached to channels. The other volumes resident in the system
can be toggled at any time into the channels. All loaded
volumes, either attached to channels or not, can be monitored
automatically by the system using rules prescribed by the
engineer.
Figure 1 shows the rendering channel menu with pressure
attached to the graphics channel, H2S mole fraction attached to
the haptic channel and gas saturation attached to the sound
channel. The lower left panel shows the list of volumes that
have been loaded.

Introduction
New generation reservoir simulators capable of handling
millions of cells imply that geological detail can be handled
without intensive up-scaling. This paves the road for direct
seismic integration with reservoir simulation. Unfortunately,
our ability to analyze information has not fully kept pace with
these advances. Recently, devices that function as a “3-D
mouse” with haptic (i.e. “touch”) capabilities have appeared.
These devices have the ability to navigate and probe inside
earth models.
We will discuss MuSE (Multi-modal Simulation
Environment), a new environment integrating a voice advisory
system with “multi-modal” visualization. This environment
provides stereo-capable 3-D visualization, force feedback via Figure 1. Rendering channel and volume management display
haptic devices and data sonification for our in-house simulator
(Ref. 1). Thus engineers can simultaneously probe multiple
variables, such as visualize oil saturation, hear changes in
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Toggling between volumes is easily accomplished by
selecting any variable in the lower left panel and selecting one
of the channel check-boxes on the right. For example, the
engineer can visualize three-dimensional pressure distribution,
feel permeability changes with the haptic device and hear oil
or gas saturation through the system speakers. The ranges of
values of these properties are assigned to a range of 0 to 255,
just like any typical “color-map”.
Therefore, MuSE provides three types of independently
assignable maps: color, haptic and sound. Figure 2 shows all
three maps side by side for illustration. Sliders are used to
control each individual map as discussed in the following
sections.
translucent to reveal only specific ranges of the data. The data
shown corresponds to a 9-component compositional
simulation of 500,000-cells for a gas-condensate reservoir.
Haptic Channel
MuSE uses a 3-D mouse-like haptic device which can be
moved with six degrees of freedom to navigate inside the data
volume. The device provides the engineer with a force-
feedback sensation. The amount of force resistance imparted
to the haptic device and felt by the engineers’ hand upon
movement of the stylus is mapped in a “haptic map”.
Greater resistance can be assigned to the high value ranges
(e.g. high H2S concentration) or low value ranges (e.g. low
permeability), as desired. This is user-controlled by a slider
from 0 (zero resistance) to 255 (strong resistance, no motion
allowed). The zero-resistance or low-resistance ranges can be
assigned to low or average values that are of less interest to
the analysis/interpretation.

Figure 2. Examples of color map, haptic map and sound map Figure 3. Pressure at a given time step

In addition, simulation results such as 3-D distribution of the

mole fraction of hydrogen sulfide or acoustic impedance from
a petro-elastic model can be tracked as events, even if these
are not directly attached to any channels. Each channel will
now be described in detail.

Visualization Channel
This is the usual 3-D visualization component of the
interpretation. A color map can be defined with colors in the
range from 0 to 255, controlled by three sliders (corresponding
to conventional R G and B respectively). So-called “rainbow”
color maps are typical (e.g. blue for low values, red for high or
vice versa). The color map panel is fully editable and
engineers can chose the upper and lower limits to concentrate
on specific value ranges if so desired.
Figures 3 to 5 show typical 3-D displays of different
simulation output variables (pressure, gas saturation and H2S
mole fraction). Figure 3 also shows the Channel Selection
Menu detailed on Figure 1. A separate opacity map provides a
slider for opacity, so that parts of the volume can be made Figure 4. Gas Saturation at a given time step
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Figure 5. H2S mole fraction at a given time step Figure 7. Pressure display between layers (sound map shown)

Sound Channel Figure 8 shows the use of opacity to highlight relevant

The sound map has been designed so that each value features in the impedance volume generated by the reservoir
corresponds to a given note of a musical instrument. The simulator, rendering the intermediate values translucent.
choice of musical instruments follows standard MIDI tables.
Three sliders are provided (see Figure 2): Musical Note,
Volume and Instrument. The Musical Note slider ranges from
0 (C00) to 127 (G9), spanning ten octaves, where each octave
is composed of the notes A to G with the accompanying flats
and sharps.
Volume ranges from 0(silent) to 127 (very loud). The
Instrument slider ranges from 0 (grand acoustic piano) to 127
(gun-shot). For example, high gas saturations can be assigned
to a trumpet in C-sharp, low gas saturations to a flute in B-flat
and very low gas saturation (and regions below the gas-water
contact) can be assigned to a French horn in F.
Figures 6 and 7 show the reservoir pressure visualized
between layers. The separation between layers and layer
thickness can be controlled at will for better visual effect. In
Figure 6 the haptic map is shown on the right. In Figure 7 the
sound map is shown on the right.
Figure 8. Opacity display of petro-elastic impedance

Rule-based automated interpretation

Figure 6. Pressure display between layers (haptic map shown)
A very powerful feature of MuSE is the ability to analyze all
the data based on rules set a-priori by the engineers. As the
time-step advances, the new state of the simulation is analyzed
by the rule set and events are triggered. These events currently
use the visual and sound channels only.
A specific message can be included in the rule so that the
text-to-speech utility speaks out the message to alert the
engineer when some conditions occur. The scope of the search
can be confined to specific wells, all wells or the full 3-D grid.
MuSE searches throughout the entire dataset and identifies the
wells or cell locations where the condition occurs.
For example, the rule “Find All Wells Where PRESSURE
< 6000” will result in the system speaking out “Pressure below
6000 at Well R-2” whenever this condition occurs at well R-2
during simulation. Similarly, the rule “Find All Blocks Where
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OIL_SATURATION > 0.05” will result in the system
speaking out “Condensate Dropout at grid-block 45,85,65”
whenever this condition occurs during simulation. In setting
up these rules, the engineer has full control over the message
that should be spoken, with the system automatically
appending the result of the search (well name or cell location)
to the message.
Alternatively, a message pop-up window can be triggered
instead of the vocal sound. MuSE can also trigger an opacity
condition when the event is encountered so that, for example,
a rule to search for condensate dropout makes the oil
saturation around wells to be visible, with the rest of the
volume appearing either translucent or totally transparent.
Future Outlook
The main limitation existing today on desktop environments is
the prevalence of 32-bit operating systems, which limit the
amount of memory that applications such as MuSE can access.
For models consisting of tens of millions of cells, desktop
workstations will require 64-bit extensions to their operating
systems.
From the hardware standpoint, some new PCs being
installed today are already 64-bit capable in one way or
another (e.g. Intel Xeon Nocona EM64T and AMD Opteron).
The increasing availability of 64-bit versions of Windows and
Linux will greatly enhance the applicability of MuSE and
other systems to the analysis of large simulation models on the
engineer’s desktop.
Figure 9 shows one of the largest volumes currently
loadable within the Windows XP memory limits, a
compositional model with 3.5-million cells and 8 components.
The variable shown is the petro-elastic shear impedance.
Figure 9. Shear impedance from 3.5-million-cell
compositional model
Integration of multi-channel rendering with rule-based
analysis automation saves valuable time to the engineer and
can form the basis for an efficient interactive/online
simulation process where the computer-aided interpretation by
the engineer keeps pace with the ever-increasing speed of
simulation supercomputers.
Conclusions
A multi-modal visualization system has been implemented to
analyze reservoir simulation results using 3-D graphics, sound
and a haptic device that can be operated as a three-
dimensional mouse. This “multi-channel” rendering enables
three different simulation variables to be engaged to the
visual, haptic and sound channel respectively.
Furthermore, the system’s ability to automatically search
any number of variables for the occurrence of important
events in the simulation and advise the engineer via text-to-
speech, pop-up messaging or visual cues (such as opacity
rendering) enables full monitoring of all the data as it changes
from one time step to the next. This saves valuable time to the
engineer and can form the basis for an efficient
interactive/online simulation process.
Future operating systems enhancements to support 64-bit
memory addressing will enable MuSE to handle the
increasingly larger datasets that we encounter in our routine
reservoir simulation practice.
Acknowledgments
We would like to thank Saudi Aramco management for
permission to publish this paper. We also thank our colleague
Tom Dreiman for his assistance in capturing the images.
References
1. Dogru, A.H; Sunaidi, H.A.; Fung, L.S.; Zamel, N.M.: “A
Parallel Reservoir Simulator for Large-Scale Reservoir
Simulation”, SPE Reservoir Evaluation and Engineering, Feb
2002, pp. 11-23.