A Spatial Correlation-Based Anomaly Detection Method for Subsurface Modeling

Spatial data analytics provides new opportunities for automated detection of anomalous data for data quality control and subsurface segmentation to reduce uncertainty in spatial models. Solely data-driven anomaly detection methods do not fully integrate spatial concepts such as spatial continuity and data sparsity. Also, data-driven anomaly detection methods are challenged in integrating critical geoscience and engineering expertise knowledge. The proposed spatial anomaly detection method is based on the semivariogram spatial continuity model derived from sparsely sampled well data and geological interpretations. The method calculates the lag joint cumulative probability for each matched pair of spatial data, given their lag vector and the semivariogram under the assumption of bivariate Gaussian distribution. For each combination of paired spatial data, the associated head and tail Gaussian standardized values of a pair of spatial data are mapped to the joint probability density function informed from the lag vector and semivariogram. The paired data are classified as anomalous if the associated head and tail Gaussian standardized values fall within a low probability zone. The anomaly decision threshold can be decided based on a loss function quantifying the cost of overestimation or underestimation. The proposed spatial correlation anomaly detection method is able to integrate domain expertise knowledge through trend and correlogram models with sparse spatial data to identify anomalous samples, region, segmentation boundaries, or facies transition zones. This is a useful automation tool for identifying samples in big spatial data on which to focus professional attention.