Application of Data-Driven Discovery Machine Learning Algorithms in Predicting Geothermal Reservoir Temperature from Geophysical Resistivity Method

Abstract

Geophysical methods including seismology, resistivity, gravity, magnetic and electromagnetic have been put in use for geothermal resource mapping at the Great Olkaria Geothermal field for decades. Reservoir temperature distribution and the electrical conductivity of rocks mainly depend on the same parameters such permeability, porosity, fluid salinity and temperature. This research focused on the integration of Olkaria Domes geothermal well testing temperature and geophysical Electromagnetic resistivity data with the aim of establishing an alternative estimation method for temperature of the reservoir through machine learning Analytics. To achieve this, Data-Driven Discovery Predictive Model Algorithm was built using Python programming language on Anaconda framework. The open-source web based application Jupyter Notebook for coding and visualization was used. Decision Tree Regression, Adaptive Booster Regression, Support Vector Regression and Random Forest Regression were used. The model performance was evaluated using R-Score and Mean Absolute Error metrics. Based on these performance score, the best performing model was suggested to predict subsurface temperature from resistivity. Training the model using the DTR algorithm approach provides superior outputs with R² of 0.81 and lowest MAE of 29.8. The DTR algorithm could be implemented in determination of subsurface Temperature from resistivity in high temperature hydrothermal fields.