Analysing Variability in Geophysical Data Interpretation by Monitoring Eye Gaze Movement

Geoscientific data interpretation is a highly subjective task as human intuition and biases play a significant role. Based on these interpretations, however, mining and petroleum industries make decisions with paramount financial implications. The aim of this study is to better understand variability in geophysical data interpretation between and within individuals. We examine the data observation pattern during interpretation using an eye tracker that captures the interpreter's eye gaze motion. Two preliminary experiments were conducted to analyse how individuals approached the task of identifying prescribed 'targets' in magnetic and seismic data respectively. Each experiment used five participants who have varying degrees of experience in these tasks. The first experiment involved identifying responses from porphyry-style intrusive systems in magnetic data of an area from Reko Diq, Pakistan. The target responses are sub-circular positive magnetic anomalies surrounded by annular lows. The second experiment was to spot unconformities and faults in a seismic image using data from the Mentelle Basin in Western Australia. The results show a significant variation in data observation patterns between interpreters. Some key findings include: a direct correlation between a higher target spotting success rate and a more systematic data search pattern; significant inconsistency in target spotting results when viewing a data in a different orientation; and a significant variation in the amount of time spent on noise dominated region.