Rock physics links seismic properties to the underlying rock and fluid characteristics, enabling better understanding of subsurface reservoirs. It integrates geology, petrophysics, and geophysics to interpret how variations in lithology, porosity, and fluids affect seismic responses. This makes it a key tool for improving reservoir characterization, reducing uncertainty, and supporting exploration and production decisions.

The course emphasizes rock-physics model building and ways to use and verify the models using seismic data. It starts with designing effective media in interactive notebooks with Python code using Differential Effective Medium (DEM). In DEM we start with an effective background medium and successively change the rock properties. The module allows the calculation of elastic parameters for different proportions of lithology mixtures and by adding sequentially different kinds of features. For clastic reservoirs interparticle and aligned cracks describe an anisotropic medium quite well, but for carbonates vugs, solution cavities, might be added. It will be shown in an exercise that the order in which features are added influences the end result. Then various aspects of AVA will be discussed: forward modelling, attribute ranking and inversion aiming at a further understanding of what can be derived from seismic in terms of reservoir properties, be it clastics (sand/shale), carbonates (limestone/dolomite) or unconventional (shale) in combination with rock physics. Each day the participants are invited to give a summary of the main learning points of the previous day and the day will be closed by a quiz, again empathizing the learning points.