SimPEG at SciPy

Seogi Kang and I just attended SciPy2014, where we presented about the progress that we have been making with SimPEG (Simulation and Parameter Estimation in Geophysics). It was a great experience, and we were able to meet quite a few people that were interested and impressed with what we have been building. We were chosen to give a poster presentation at the conference, but Matt Hall also snuck us into the geophysics talks where we gave a five minute advertisement! The Python conferences have a pretty cool tradition of Lightning talks, where they allow anyone to signup and give a five minute presentation about anything they want! These talks are in front of the entire audience and are very well attended, so it allows someone who didn’t sign up for a talk, the space and time to get their message out. It was very high energy and not something that I have seen at other academic conferences.

A few take aways that I got from my experience at the conference were that we need to communicate more about what we are doing with geophysical inversions. Hence the starting of a blog that is for SimPEG!! I hope that there will be more coming on this blog soon!

Brief Description¶

We present an open source package for Simulation and Parameter Estimation in Geophysics (SimPEG). SimPEG provides a framework for solving a variety of geophysical forward and inverse problems. We show SimPEG’s utility for electromagnetic, seismic and fluid-flow. By structuring our methodologies in an extensible framework, SimPEG provides a platform that promotes integration of geophysical data.

Detailed Abstract¶

Each abstract will be peer-reviewed by multiple members of the Program Committee Board. Abstracts will be accepted for posters or presentations. Optional papers to be published in the conference proceedings will be requested following abstract submission. This year the proceedings will be made available prior to the conference to help attendees navigate the conference.

Geophysical surveys are powerful tools for obtaining information about the subsurface. Inverse modelling provides a mathematical framework for constructing a model of physical property distributions that are consistent with the data collected by these surveys. The geosciences are increasingly moving towards the integration of geological, geophysical, and hydrological information to better characterize the subsurface. This integration must span disciplines and is not only challenging scientifically, but the inconsistencies between conventions often makes implementations complicated, non-reproducible, or inefficient. A team of researchers at the Geophysical Inversion Facility at The University of British Columbia have developed an open source software package for Simulation and Parameter Estimation in Geophysics (SimPEG, http://github.com/simpeg), which provides a generalized framework for solving geophysical forward and inverse problems. SimPEG is written entirely in Python with core dependencies on SciPy, NumPy, and Matplotlib with the hopes that it can be used both as an effective research tool and a tool for use in education.

SimPEG includes finite volume discretizations on structured and unstructured meshes, interfaces to standard numerical solver packages, convex optimization algorithms, model parameterizations, and tailored visualization routines. The framework is modular and object-oriented, which promotes real time experimentation and combination of geophysical problems and inversion methodologies. In this presentation we will demonstrate the usability and extensibility of the framework by providing a number of examples of forward and inverse modelling in the geosciences including electromagnetics, potential-fields, seismic, and fluid-flow. SimPEG provides a fexible, documented (http://simpeg.rtfd.org), and well-tested (https://travis-ci.org/simpeg/simpeg) framework that is useful in many geophysical applications. By embracing a fully open source development paradigm, we hope to encourage reproducible research, cooperation, and communication to help tackle some of the inherently multidisciplinary problems that face integrated geophysical methods.