Virtual-Intelligence Applications in Petroleum Engineering: Part 1—Artificial Neural Networks

Abstract

Distinguished Author Series articles are general, descriptive representations that summarize the state of the art in an area of technology by describing recent developments for readers who are not specialists in the topics discussed. Written by individuals recognized to be experts in the area, these articles provide key references to more definitive work and present specific details only to illustrate the technology. Purpose: to inform the general readership of recent advances in various areas of petroleum engineering. Summary This is the first article of a three-article series on virtual intelligence and its applications in petroleum and natural gas engineering. In addition to discussing artificial neural networks, the series covers evolutionary programming and fuzzy logic. Intelligent hybrid systems that incorporate an integration of two or more of these paradigms and their application in the oil and gas industry are also discussed in these articles. The intended audience is the petroleum professional who is not quite familiar with virtual intelligence but would like to know more about the technology and its potential. Those with a prior understanding of and experience with the technology should also find the articles useful and informative. Background and Definitions This section covers some historical background of the technology, provides definitions of virtual intelligence and artificial neural networks, and offers more general information on the nature and mechanism of the artificial neural network and its relation to biological neural networks. Virtual intelligence has been referred to by different names. Among these are artificial intelligence, computational intelligence, and soft computing. There seems to be no uniformly acceptable name for this collection of analyticools among the researchers and practitioners of the technology. Of these, artificial intelligence is used the least as an umbrella term because artificial intelligence has historically referred to rule-based expert systems and today is used synonymously with expert systems. Expert systems made many promises of delivering intelligent computers and programs but did not fulfill these promises. Many believe that soft computing is the most appropriate term to use and that virtual intelligence is a subset of soft computing. While this argument has merit, we use the term virtual intelligence throughout these articles.