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Title: Expert systems in exploration: can they be cost-effective

Conference · · AAPG (Am. Assoc. Pet. Geol.) Bull.; (United States)
OSTI ID:6185886

PROSPECTOR is the best-known application of an expert system in exploration. Others exist for gamma-ray well logging analysis but are in general company-restricted and not in the open literature. PROSPECTOR, however, is comprised of a large set of elegant subprograms, each designed for a specific goal - generally for hard minerals. The program is expensive, costly to run, and requires a mainframe (usually a LISP machine) for operation. Recently, a microcomputer-based version (u-PROSPECTOR) has become available, but it still follows the formal artificial intelligence (AI) syntax of PROSPECTOR. In the Remote Sensing Laboratory at Stanford, they have been experimenting with low-end ($100-$1000) AI programs. The development of these has been driven by (1) the explosion of availability of microcomputers and (2) the realization by developers that the marketplace has many more Fortran and C-language machines available than the dedicated (and expensive) LISP units. This paper will discuss those commercially available, low-priced AI shells as applied to several of the simplest exploration problems - spectral pattern recognition and texture in radar imagery - and extrapolate their usefulness to more complex decision-making steps in exploration practice.

Research Organization:
Stanford Univ., CA
OSTI ID:
6185886
Report Number(s):
CONF-870606-
Journal Information:
AAPG (Am. Assoc. Pet. Geol.) Bull.; (United States), Vol. 71:5; Conference: American Association of Petroleum Geologists annual meeting, Los Angeles, CA, USA, 7 Jun 1987
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English