Fracture Characterization through Multi-Physics Joint Inversion

Natural and man-made fractures tend to significantly impact the behavior of a subsurface system – with both desirable and undesirable consequences. Thus, the description, characterization, and prediction of fractured systems requires careful conceptualization and a defensible modeling approach that is tailored to the objectives of a specific application. We review some of these approaches and the related data needs, and discuss the use of multi-physics joint inversion techniques to identify and characterize the relevant features of the fracture system. In particular, we demonstrate the potential use of a non-isothermal, multiphase flow simulator coupled to a thermo-poro-elastic model for the calculation of observable deformations during injection-production operations. This model is integrated into a joint inversion framework for the estimation of geometrical, hydrogeological, rockmechanical, thermal, and statistical parameters representing the fractured porous medium.