Spatial agents for geological surface modelling

Increased availability and use of 3D-rendered geological models have provided society with predictive capabilities, supporting natural resource assessments, hazard awareness, and infrastructure development. The Geological Survey of Canada, along with other such institutions, has been trying to standardize and operationalize this modelling practice. Knowing what is in the subsurface, however, is not an easy exercise, especially when it is difficult or impossible to sample at greater depths. Existing approaches for creating 3D geological models involve developing surface components that represent spatial geological features, horizons, faults, and folds, and then assembling them into a framework model as context for downstream property modelling applications (e.g. geophysical inversions, thermo-mechanical simulations, and fracture density models). The current challenge is to develop geologically reasonable starting framework models from regions with sparser data when we have more complicated geology. This study explores the problem of geological data sparsity and presents a new approach that may be useful to open up the logjam in modelling the more challenging terrains using an agent-based approach.