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Analog‐based meandering channel simulation
Author(s) -
Mariethoz Gregoire,
Comunian Alessandro,
Irarrazaval Inigo,
Renard Philippe
Publication year - 2014
Publication title -
water resources research
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.863
H-Index - 217
eISSN - 1944-7973
pISSN - 0043-1397
DOI - 10.1002/2013wr013730
Subject(s) - curvilinear coordinates , geology , stochastic simulation , alluvium , flexibility (engineering) , channel (broadcasting) , point (geometry) , aquifer , hydrology (agriculture) , computer science , groundwater , geomorphology , statistics , geometry , geotechnical engineering , mathematics , computer network
Characterizing the complex geometries and the heterogeneity of the deposits in meandering river systems is a long‐standing issue for the 3‐D modeling of alluvial formations. Such deposits are important sources of accessible groundwater in alluvial aquifers throughout the world and also play a major role as hydrocarbons reservoirs. In this paper, we present a method to generate meandering river centerlines that are stochastic, geologically realistic, connected, and conditioned to local observations or global geomorphological characteristics. The method is based on fast 1‐D multiple‐point statistics in a transformed curvilinear domain: the succession in directions observed in a real‐world meandering river (the analog) is considered as statistical model for multiple‐point statistics simulation. The integration of local data is accomplished by an inverse procedure ensuring that the channels pass through a given set of locations while conserving the high‐order spatial characteristics of an analog. The methodology is applied on seven real‐world case studies. This work demonstrates the flexibility and the applicability of multiple‐point statistics outside the standard paradigm that considers the simulation of a 2‐D or 3‐D variable with spatial coordinates.