Large-scale Geological Model Visualization

Overview

KVL, in collaboration with Prof. Markus Hadwiger's group and Saudi Aramco, is developing a large-scale geological model visualization system that can handle oil reservoir simulation models with up to one trillion cells.

Work Summary

Saudi Aramco is continuously improving their oil reservoir simulation capabilities, with the aim of increasing the resolution of their simulations, currently aiming for outputs with one trillion cells. The scale of the generated data sets cannot be handled with standard visualization tools due to the sheer amount of data that needs to be processed in real time. This collaborative project aims to address this challenge by developing a visualization system that scales to arbitrary data complexity. When the project started in January 2019 until the end of its first phase in December 2021, it was led by then Research Scientist, Dr. Ronell Sicat, who is now a Visualization Scientist at KVL. The second phase of the project which spans November 2022 to end of 2025 is currently in progress with plans of adding advanced analysis and flow visualization features. This time, Dr. Sicat provides expert support and development contributions to the project. So far, this project has resulted in two publications in the biggest visualization conference IEEE VIS where Dr. Sicat presented in Oklahoma City, USA on October 2022 (see below for papers and photos).

R. Sicat, M. Ibrahim, A. Ageeli, F. Mannuss, P. Rautek and M. Hadwiger, “Real-Time Visualization of Large-Scale Geological Models with Nonlinear Feature-Preserving Levels of Detail,” in IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics, doi: 10.1109/TVCG.2021.3120372.

A. Ageeli, A. Jaspe Villanueva, R. Sicat, F. Mannuss, P. Rautek and M. Hadwiger, “Multivariate Probabilistic Range Queries for Scalable Interactive 3D Visualization,” to appear in IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics (Proceedings IEEE VIS 2022).

Impact

This long-term project with KAUST faculty and in-Kingdom entity Saudi Aramco is an example of KVL's wide-ranging collaborative efforts resulting, not only in beneficial technologies but also scientific publications.