Effective geo-system management involves understanding of the interplay between surface entities (e.g., locations of injection and production wells in an oil reservoir) and appropriately effecting subsurface characteristics. This in turn requires efficient integration of complex numerical models of the environment, optimization procedures, and decision making processes. The dynamic, data-driven application systems (DDDAS) paradigm offers a promising framework to address this requirement. To achieve this goal, we have developed advanced multi-physics, multiscale, and multi-block numerical models and autonomic systems software for dynamic, data-driven applications systems. This work has enabled a new generation of data-driven, interactive and dynamically adaptive strategies for subsurface characterization and management. These strategies have been applied to different aspects of subsurface management in strategically important application areas, including simulation-based optimization for the optimal oil well placement and the data-driven management of the Ruby Gulch Waste Repository. This paper summarizes the key outcomes and achievements of our work, as well as reports ongoing and future activities focused on uncertainty estimation and characterization.
INTRODUCTIONThe dynamic, data driven application systems (DDDAS) paradigm is enabling a new generation of end-to-end multidisciplinary applications that are based on seamless aggregation of and interactions between computations, resources, and data. An important class of applications in this paradigm includes simulations of complex physical phenomena that symbiotically and opportunistically combine computations, experiments, observations, and real-time data to provide important insights into complex systems.As part of the "Instrumented Oil-Field" project [1-8], we have developed several key DDDAS technologies to enable a new generation of data-driven, interactive and dynamically adaptive strategies for subsurface characterization and reservoir management. This project aimed at completing the symbiotic feedback loop between measured data and the computational models to provide more efficient, cost-effective and environmentally safer production of oil reservoirs, which can result in enormous strategic and economic benefits. The project has led to conceptual and infrastructure solutions, which include advanced multi-physics, multi-scale and multi-block numerical models as well as a DDDAS software stack. The software stack provides a middleware for autonomic DDDAS applications and consists of a Grid-based execution engine that supports self-optimizing, dynamically adaptive applications, distributed data management services for large scale data management and processing, and self-managing middleware services for seamless discovery, access, interactions and compositions of services and data on the Grid.In this paper, we summarize these computational techniques and infrastructure components for the dynamic data-driven management and optimization of subsurface geo-systems...