Patent ID: 7672824

Claim:
A method for determining shallow water flow risk, comprising: developing a geologic model of shallow water flow risk areas; performing a stratigraphic analysis on reflected P-wave seismic data of the geologic model to determine a control location within the reflected P-wave seismic data; applying a pre-stack full waveform inversion on the reflected P-wave seismic data at the control location to provide an elastic earth model of the shallow water flow risk areas based on the geologic model and the stratigraphic analysis, wherein the elastic earth model is determined by matching the reflected P-wave seismic data with synthetic seismic data of the geologic model and the elastic earth model comprises P-wave velocity and S-wave velocity; computing a ratio between the P-wave velocity and the S-wave velocity; and identifying multiple shallow water flow risk areas using the relationship of the P-wave velocity to the S-wave velocity ratio with respect to seismic travel time.