Case Studies and Practical Examples

Simulation methods fall into two broad classes: pixel methods and object-based methods. Before presenting any practical examples, it is important to decide which method would be the most appropriate for the problem under study. So we first review the pros and cons of two classes of models, sequence-based pixel methods such as the truncated gaussian and plurigaussian simulations, and object-based methods, in particular boolean simulations. As this book focuses on plurigaussian simulations, we do not intend to present boolean simulations here. Interested readers can consult Matheron (1968, 1975), Lantuejoul (1997a, 1997b and 2002) Chiles and Delfiner (1999), and Molchanov (1997). Sequence-based pixel methods and boolean simulations can also be combined to get the best of both approaches. These are called nested simulations.