Detecting Near-Surface Cavities and Shallow Heterogeneities through Surface Wave Attributes: Methods and Applications

Detecting cavities, fault zones, and low-velocity anomalies is a primary objective for geotechnical characterization and urban planning, as well as for geohazard studies and mineral exploration. Surface wave attributes based on energy and attenuation of the raw seismic data can provide a major contribution in the identification and location of these near-surface heterogeneities. The attribute computation is fast and straightforward, making them ideal tools for automatic site screening in near real time. Their effectiveness has been tested on a wide variety of numerical models and real data.