Introduction

Overview

Geostatistics is used in fields such as mining, forestry, hydrology, and meteorology in order to understand how data values change over distance.  Probably the most common use of geostatistics is to make estimations, such as the specific gravity of rock for an area where there are only a few known sample values.  This is often done in three-dimensional space.  A set of estimated points in space is known as a “model”.  As George Box, a professor of Statistics at the University of Wisconsin in the United States, once said, “All models are wrong.  Some are useful.”

Requirements

Before proceeding with this tutorial, you need to have installed Surpac. Additionally, you should have a good understanding of the following concepts in Surpac:

• geological database
• solid modelling
• block modelling (how to create and constrain a model)
• tcl scripts

Caution: If you do not have a good background in these subjects, many parts of this tutorial could be difficult to follow.

Workflow

There can be many different workflows for applying geostatistical techniques. The decision of which techniques to apply, and which order they are applied in is usually something that only experience will teach you.

Here is a generic process for performing a geostatistical analysis: