1

Introduction

SGeMS, the Stanford Geostatistical Modeling Software, is a software developed at

Stanford University that implements several geostatistics algorithms for the modeling of earth systems and more generally space-time distributed phenomena. It
was written with two goals in mind. The rst one, geared toward the end-user,
is to provide a user-friendly software which offers a large range of geostatistics
tools: the most common geostatistics algorithms are implemented, in addition to
more recent developments such as multiple-point statistics simulation. The userfriendliness of SGeMS comes from its non-obtrusive graphical user interface, and
the possibility to directly visualize data sets and results in a full 3D interactive
environment.
The second objective was to design a software that would cater to the needs
of power-users. In SGeMS, most of the operations performed using the graphical
interface can also be executed programmatically. The integrated support for the
Python scripting language enables the creation of simple macros all the way to
complete nested applications with an independent graphical interface. New features
can conveniently be added into SGeMS through a system of plug-ins, i.e. pieces of
software which can not be run by themselves but complement a main software.
In SGeMS, plug-ins can be used to add new geostatistics tools, add new grid data
structures (faulted stratigraphic grids for example) or dene new import/export le
lters. SGeMS is used as a development platform for geostatistics at the Stanford
Center for Reservoir Forecasting (SCRF).

The book structure

Chapter 2 begins with a concise tutorial that walks the reader through the main
steps involved in a simple geostatistical study. The aim of this tutorial is to give an
1

Introduction

overview of the capabilities of SGeMS and direct the reader to the different parts of
the book for more details. The second part of Chapter 2 gives the conventions used
throughout the book, for example, how 3D ellipsoids are dened, how Cartesian
grids are dened and the details of data le formats.
Chapter 3 recalls the fundamental geostatistics concepts used in the book. Apart
from classical aspects of geostatistics such as variograms and kriging, this chapter
also introduces the concept of multiple-points statistics, at the root of two major
algorithms presented in Section 8.2.
Chapter 4 presents the main data sets used throughout the rest of the book.
All these data sets are available on the CD included with this book. As the
data sets are described, the tools for elementary data exploration are introduced:
histograms, scatterplots, quantilequantile and probabilityprobability plots. Variograms being of particular importance in geostatistics are described in a separate
chapter: Chapter 5 details the tools to compute experimental variograms and
model them.
Chapters 6 through 9 constitute a reference manual to the SGeMS geostatistics
algorithms. For each algorithm, practical aspects and implementation considerations are reviewed, the required input parameters are exhaustively described, and
a brief example run is presented. The reader is encouraged to try to reproduce the
runs to get familiar with the algorithm and its parameters. Chapter 6 introduces
the main graphical interfaces used to input parameters to the SGeMS algorithms.
For example, many algorithms such as kriging, sequential Gaussian simulation and
direct sequential simulation require a variogram and a search ellipsoid. The variogram and search ellipsoid input interfaces used by these three algorithms are
described in this chapter.
Chapter 7 describes the estimation algorithms available in SGeMS: simple kriging, ordinary kriging, kriging with a trend or a locally varying mean,
indicator kriging and cokriging. The theory behind each algorithm is briey
recalled and implementation considerations are discussed. All the controlling
parameters are then thoroughly described. Practical considerations are isolated in
gray-background boxes.
Chapter 8 is divided into two main parts. Section 8.1 is dedicated to variogrambased simulation algorithms: sequential Gaussian simulation, sequential indicator
simulation, direct sequential simulation and their co-simulation variants. The
second half of Chapter 8 (Section 8.2) introduces two recently developed simulation algorithms: SNESIM and FILTERSIM. These two algorithms are based
on the multiple-points statistics paradigm presented in Chapter 3. Because these
algorithms are recent, a large portion of the text is devoted to the description of
best practices and the impact of the input parameters on runtime performance and
quality of the nal results.

Source code and compilation

Chapter 9 presents service algorithms, called utilities, useful to prepare the input
data of the estimation and simulation algorithms, and then analyze their output.
The last chapter (Chapter 10) teaches the advanced user how to automate
tasks in SGeMS, using either its system of commands or the embedded Python
scripting language. Describing Python would be a book topic of its own; this
chapter just describes how SGeMS and Python cooperate, and directs the reader
who wants to learn Python to outside sources. Last, a major feature of SGeMS
is introduced: SGeMS supports a plug-in mechanism to augment its functionalities, allowing for example the addition of new geostatistics algorithms or
adding support for new types of grids on which geostatistics could be performed.
As for Python, a tutorial on C++ and SGeMS plug-ins development is beyond
the scope of this book, and the advanced user is pointed to several on-line
resources.
Contents of the disc
The disc distributed with this book is organized in four folders:

the SGeMS executable and the corresponding source code

the data sets, parameter les and scripts used in the tutorial of Chapter 2
the data sets introduced in Chapter 4 and used throughout the book
script les to generate most of the gures included in the book. Each sub-folder
corresponds to a section of the book and contains a script that, when run through
SGeMS, creates the gures of that section.
Source code and compilation

SGeMS is currently available on both Linux and Microsoft Windows platforms.

Although it has also been successfully compiled on other Unix platforms
(BSD and Solaris) and Mac OSX, no binaries are currently available for
those operating systems. The code is distributed under the GNU General Public License (GPL). For more information about the GPL, refer to
http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html.
The source code and a Microsoft Windows executable are distributed
on the accompanying disc, and can also be downloaded from the web at
http://sgems.sourceforge.net.
To compile SGeMS, the following third-party libraries are required.
GsTL (Geostatistics Template Library)
Qt (GUI library) version 3.x (version 4 and higher is not supported yet)
Coin3D (OpenInventor library), version 2.x

Introduction

SoQt (Qt bindings for OpenInventor), version 1.x

SimVoleon (Volume rendering extension for Coin3D), version 2.x
A compiler that correctly supports C++ templates (e.g. member templates and
template specialization) is also required. SGeMS has been successfully compiled
with gcc-2.96, gcc-3.3.4, gcc-4, Intel C++ compiler, Visual C++ 2003 and Visual
C++ 2005.