Automated 2D Boulder Detection
Please note that the Boulder Detection 2D module is licensed separately.
Detecting boulders in subbottom sediments is critical for de-risking offshore wind farm installations and minimizing their costs. Although the 3D high-resolution (HR) and ultra-high-resolution (UHR) seismic is the only tool for reliable location of boulders, one can still assess the possibility of the boulder existing below a 2D seismic line while processing a 2D seismic survey.
On 2D seismic data, the boulders appear as diffracted events. Using the diffraction imaging workflows in RadExPro, one can separate these diffractions from the data and compute diffraction attributes such as diffraction energy and semblance. The attributes focus the diffraction energy at the boulder locations.
Original seismic data (left), estimated diffractions (center) and diffraction energy attribute (right)
The dedicated Boulder Detection 2D tool uses these attributes together with the original data to locate and label the boulders and compute their spatial properties. These properties are then used to filter out those boulder candidates, which do not fit the a priori constraints on the boulder shape — too flat, too big/small, etc.
Interactive Boulder Detection 2D module window with highlighted contours of detected boulders
The result is exported as a table of detected boulders with their locations, depths and sizes.
An example of an exported boulder table
