Numerical simulations of geological reservoirs: improving their conditioning through the use of entropy

The aim of this study is to demonstrate by means of numerical experiments that the simulation of random fields may provide images that are too spatially disorganized to represent correctly some continuous properties of geological reservoirs. Increasing the number of conditioning data does not provide a satisfactory answer to the problem. The study shows that the bivariate entropy calculated on the simulated fields is a sensitive indicator of their spatial disorder. By using this measure in the objective function of a simulated annealing procedure, previously simulated random fields can be post-conditioned on their bivariate entropy in order to reduce their spatial disorder. (C) 2000 IMACS/Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.