Velocity model building strategy for multi-azimuth surveys
Junru Jiao*, Chaoguang Zhou, Sonny Lin, Dennis van der Burg, and Sverre Brandsberg-Dahl, Petroleum Geo-
Services
Summary
While multi-azimuth surveys offer much more information
than conventional narrow azimuth surveys, it is a challenge
to effectively and efficiently utilize all azimuths to build a
reliable velocity model. We propose the following strategy:
migration and residual curvature picking independently for
each shooting direction, rotating and merging the residuals,
and true geometry tomography based on a single grid. The
proposed method has been applied and validated on several
surveys. The results demonstrate that multi-azimuth
reflection tomographic inversion can resolve smaller scale
velocity variations than narrow-azimuth inversion, and
hence enables more accurate velocity model building in
depth.
Introduction
In a multi-azimuth (MAZ) 3D seismic survey, the data are
acquired in more than one shooting direction over the same
survey location. In addition to illuminating the same target
from multiple directions, different shooting directions can
also illuminate various parts of the target in the presence of
a complex overburden. Multi-azimuth acquisition has been
shown to be beneficial for attenuating multiple diffraction
energy and improving illumination (e.g. Keggin et al.,
2007). Here, we propose a strategy on how to utilize multi-
azimuth seismic data to build an accurate velocity model.
The concept is demonstrated in Figure 1. First, individual
azimuth seismic data are pre-processed and migrated using
an initial velocity model in a grid consistent with the
shooting direction. This gives us the opportunity to apply
the best practices for each shooting direction individually.
The acquisition geometry for every trace is stored in disk
files during migration. Second, residual moveout analysis is
performed on migrated data for each azimuth. Third,
residuals are rotated and merged into a master grid. Finally,
reflection tomographic inversion is used to update the
velocity model using the stored acquisition geometry based
on the master grid. This procedure may need to be repeated
several times to derive a reliable velocity model with
higher resolution.
Data preparation and migration of individual azimuth
To fully take advantage of the multi-azimuth survey, we
need to efficiently carry over the acquisition information to
the tomographic inversion. We use Cartesian vector offsets
to connect the acquisition geometry with the migrated data.
In a Cartesian coordinate system, offset is decomposed into
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two components: inline offset and crossline offset. The
inline and crossline offsets are divided into a two
dimensional grid with a given bin size. The bins are
uniquely numbered. We call this number the common
Cartesian offset bin number (CCOB). In case of a multi-
azimuth survey, the inline offset is aligned with the sail-line
direction of the individual azimuth survey and we use a
different range of bin numbers for each azimuth. To
illustrate CCOB numbering, consider a hypothetical dual-
azimuth survey with a vessel configuration of 16 streamers
with 100 meter separation and 480 groups of hydrophones
with 20 meter interval. The minimum and maximum inline
offsets are 200 and 9780 meters, respectively. The crossline
offset is from -750 to 750 meters. We select 240 meters for
inline offset bin size and 400 meters for crossline offset bin
size. Therefore, there are 40 bins in the inline direction, 4
bins in the crossline direction, and 160 bins in total. In
Figures 2 and 3 the corresponding common offset bins and
numbers for the east-west and north-south directions are
displayed on top of the vessel layout. To identify azimuths,
we number the bins from 1 to 160 for the east-west sail-line
and from 161 to 320 for the north-south sail-line. These bin
numbers, along with the shot and receiver coordinates, are
pre-stored before migration. Each individual azimuth
survey is migrated independently. During migration, within
each common image point gather we stack migrated traces
which have the same bin number.Thus, for each common
image point the migrated seismic traces are associated with
the shot and receiver coordinates of their corresponding
input traces by the unique CCOB numbers.
Residual analysis and rotation
For a typical tomographic inversion based on migrated
data, the minimum input consist of residuals at different
offsets from the same event within a common image gather
and the reflector orientation associated with the event.
Following the multi-parameter controlled automatic
picking technique (Jiao et. al., 2009), we pick the residuals
and reflectors on the individual azimuths and then rotate
them into the master grid. Since the reflector orientation is
a vector of two components – slopes in both inline and
crossline directions – we just perform a vector rotation.
After rotation, we usually need to interpolate or extrapolate
reflector’s attributes in the rotated reflector positions into
the bin locations of the master grid while the CCOB
numbers are kept unchanged. The residuals are associated
with the bin numbers. Then, we can treat a multi-azimuth
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 Velocity model building strategy
survey as a wide azimuth survey for the purpose of
tomographic inversion.
Tomographic inversion based on the true geometry
Compared with conventional narrow azimuth surveys,
multi-azimuth surveys possess a much wider range of
azimuth distribution. To incorporate reflections from all
azimuths into the inversion, we have developed a
tomographic inversion based on the true acquisition
geometry (Zhou et al., 2008). As discussed in the previous
section, all coordinates of shots and receivers and the
common offset bin numbers are stored before migration. To
set up the linear system, we trace many reflection ray pairs
from a subsurface reflector to the surface. The reflection
ray pair connects migrated events to acquisition geometry
through the stored information. The linear system is solved
by a conjugate gradient solver regularized by 3D Gaussian
filters (Zhou et al., 2009). A Gaussian filter outputs a
weighted average of each point's neighborhood, with the
average weighted more towards the value of the central
points. Therefore, a Gaussian filter preserves edges better
than a similarly sized mean filter. By choosing different
standard deviations for different spatial zones, we control
the smoothing wavelength locally. We can also gradually
reduce standard deviations as the tomography iterations
progress, thus building up the velocity field progressively
from the long wavelength components to the shorter ones
in a gradual fashion.
Field data example
The proposed strategy has been applied to a multi-azimuth
survey in the Deep Water Nile Delta. The survey consists
of six overlapping narrow-azimuth towed streamer surveys
at 30° sail-line increments, five of which were available at
the time of processing (Van der Burg et al., 2010). The
study area is known to contain shallow channels below the
dipping sea floor, and anhydrite pockets just below the top-
Messinian (Manning et al., 2009). We selected the zero
azimuth survey as the master grid with certain extension to
cover all five azimuths. The initial velocity model was
derived from NMO velocity analysis. We first performed
the following processes independently on each of the five
azimuths: common vector offset binning, storing
coordinates and bin numbers, dip decomposition, beam
migration to generate common image gathers (Sherwood et
al., 2009), automatic picking of residual curvatures and
reflectors, and rotating the residuals and reflectors into the
master grid. Then, tomographic inversion was applied on
the master grid. The updated model from the inversion is
rotated back into the individual grid. After four iterations of
migration and tomography, we successfully resolved small-
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scale velocity anomalies (~250 m) caused by the shallow
channel around 1.6km depth (Figure 4).
We also applied a series of QC processes to make sure
multi-azimuths were correctly merged and to monitor the
inversion. Figure 5 overlays the reflectors from different
azimuths over the stack section from the master grid. This
figure shows that although the reflectors are picked
independently on each azimuth, they are quite consistent
with each other. Figure 6 compares the ray densities from
the 600 azimuth to the sum of the five azimuths, which
demonstrates that multi-azimuth surveys have much more
homogeneous ray distribution than single azimuth surveys.
This explains why we can derive a higher resolution model
from multi-azimuth survey than a single narrow azimuth
survey. Figure 7 presents two interleaved common image
gathers from all azimuths after two iterations. The traces
are arranged in the ascendant order of offsets with all
azimuths displayed for each offset. The left panel is the
gather migrated using the model derived from the single
azimuth data while the right panel is the gather migrated
using the model obtained from the five azimuth data. This
figure shows that multi-azimuth inversion results in an
improved velocity model that better flattens the gathers for
all different azimuths (reduced ‘sawtooth’ effect).
Conclusions
We have established the velocity model building strategy
for multi-azimuth surveys: conducting migration and
residual analysis on the individual azimuth datasets
independently based on their own grids, rotating and
merging the residuals into the master grid, and tomographic
inversion using the true acquisition geometry based on the
master grid. Migration and residual analysis based on the
individual azimuth enable us to apply the best practices
suitable for each azimuth data set. The bin number of
common Cartesian vector offset connects the migrated
traces with acquisition geometry which makes the true
geometry tomographic inversion practical. The true
geometry tomographic inversion naturally includes
information from all azimuths. This strategy has been
applied to several projects in production. By using this
strategy, we have easily handled several data sets from
multi-azimuth surveys and fully taken advantages of multi-
azimuths for building a velocity model. Field data
examples have proved that multi-azimuth inversion
resolves smaller scale velocity variations than narrow-
azimuth inversion, and hence enables more accurate
velocity model building in depth.
Acknowledgements
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 Velocity model building strategy

BP, RWE Dea, EGAS and PGS are thanked for permission
to publish this paper. We are indebted to Simon Barnes for
pre-processing the seismic data and to Rick Irving and
Edward Lewis for their support. Roald van Borselen and
Walter Rietveld are thanked for technical discussions and
feedback. We also thank Guillaume Cambois for valuable
comments.

Figure 1. Proposed workflow for multi-azimuth velocity model

building.

Figure 3. Common Cartesian offset bins for a

north-south sail-line in a dual-azimuth survey,
overlaid on a vessel layout. Figure 2. Common Cartesian offset bins for an east-west
sail-line of a dual-azimuth survey, overlaid on a vessel
layout.

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 Velocity model building strategy

Figure 4. Shallow depth slices through initial and updated velocity models and through final beam migrated stack. The
lateral smoothing σ was gradually decreased from 2000m to 250m.

Figure 5. Auto-picked reflectors from different azimuths overlaid on the stack section from the master grid.

Figure 6. Density of rays used in the inversion. Notice Figure 7. Interleaved common image point gathers.
the improved ray coverage for multi-azimuth (right). Left: after two narrow-azimuth updates. Right: after
two multi-azimuth updates.

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 EDITED REFERENCES
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SEG Technical Program Expanded Abstracts have been copy edited so that references provided with the online metadata for
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