Reasoning about geological space: Coupling 3D GeoModels and topological queries as an aid to spatial data selection

Topological relationships between geological objects are of great interest for mining and petroleum exploration. Indeed, adjacency, inclusion and intersection are common relationships between geological objects such as faults, geological units, fractures, mineralized zones and reservoirs. However, in the context of 3D modeling, actual geometric data models used to store those objects are not designed to manage explicit topological relationships. For example, with Gocad© software, topological analyses are possible but they require a series of successive manipulations and are time consuming. This paper presents the development of a 3D topological query prototype, TQuery, compatible with Gocad© modeling platform. It allows the user to export Gocad© objects to a data storage model that regularizes the topological relationships between objects. The development of TQuery was oriented towards the use of volumetric objects that are composed of tetrahedrons. Exported data are then retrieved and used for 3D topological and spatial queries. One of the advantages of TQuery is that different types of objects can be queried at the same time without restricting the operations to voxel regions. TQuery allows the user to analyze data more quickly and efficiently and does not require a 3D modeling specialist to use it, which is particularly attractive in the context of a decision-making aid. The prototype was tested on a 3D GeoModel of a continental red-bed copper deposit in the Silurian Robitaille Formation (Transfiguration property, Québec, Canada).