3D geological modelling based on 2D geological map

Abstract

Current methods for constructing a 3D geological model of an area require field drilling or measured section data which are often not available over large areas. 2D geological maps not only contain information on the distribution of geological strata but also provide sufficient geometric, topological and semantic information for 3D geological modelling. This paper presents a method for constructing a detail 3D model from 2D geological maps. First, a series of parallel cross sections is automatically created from the 2D geological map and the corresponding relationships of the geological objects in the cross sections are recorded. Second, a contour algorithm is used to connect these cross sections to establish a 3D geological model of the study area. The spacing of cross sections has strong impact on the result, we proposed a rule to determine the spacing of cross sections adaptively. As a case study, the method was applied to construct a 3D geological model for Xing-gang area in Chongqing city. The results of this case study suggest that the method is effective to construct a quality 3D geological model solely based on the information from a 2D geological map of the area. ARTICLE HISTORY

Subsurface Boundary Geometry Modeling: Applying Computational Physics, Computer Vision, and Signal Processing Techniques to Geoscience

“…In particular, differential geometry was used to select objects of concave and convex curvature, these features can help identify subtle cues for fluid flow events that are perhaps over-looked by conventional interpretation methods. For an in-depth survey of past efforts and current interests in 3D geological mapping, readers are referred to [13], [14], [15] and [16]. Relevant techniques from computational physics and computer vision are presented in Appendixes A and B.…”

Legal requirements for real property stratification

“…3D geological and soil models are used to better reflect geological and soil aspects, providing improved visual information of geological and soil information (Jarna et al, 2015). 3D geological modelling techniques and the use of these tools in bedrock, geophysics, urban and groundwater studies in Norway are described by (Jarna et al, 2015), while (Lin, Zhou, Lv, & Zhu, 2017), describe a method of developing 3D geological models from 2D geological maps. 3D subsurface maps are already available in several countries, such as Belgium, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, Australia and Canada (Fig.…”