Performance Analysis of Electrical Resistivity Tomography Software Packages for Field Data Interpretation in the Seismically Active Areas (a Case Study of Gorny Altai)

Employees of the Trofimuk Institute of Petroleum Geology and Geophysics, Siberian Branch, Russian Academy of Sciences, have carried out regular geoelectrical surveys in the Gorny Altai region since 2004. Electrical resistivity tomography is used to construct geoelectric models of the section’s upper part to a depth of a few tens of meters. One of its important objectives is to determine the fault zone parameters. Large regional Cenozoic faults characterized by a high displacement amplitude are usually well-defined in the terrain. Intradepression interblock faults covered by sedimentary deposits are hard to identify by geological methods, but according to the electrical resistivity tomography data, they are characterized mainly by low electrical resistivity zones in the sections. Practical application of the electrical resistivity tomography to study the Gorny Altai fault structures have been considered. Analysis of the accumulated field data has made it possible to create typical models of the fault structures in the area under consideration. We have compared the synthetic data inversion results obtained through numerical modeling of the Gorny Altai fault zones using well-known software and our own development works. The capabilities of different software packages used to interpret the electrical resistivity tomography data have been analyzed.