1. Introduction
Geological phenomena and structures exist in three dimensions (3D). The solution of deep earth problems requires 3D visualization and geological analysis as the basis, and the premise of all this is 3D geological modeling [
1,
2]. Three dimensional (3D) geological modeling not only has very important application value in many fields such as urban planning, engineering construction, oil and gas storage, digital mines, etc., but also has a certain significance in the research of geological phenomenon interpretation, geological disaster prediction, geological environment assessment, and the quantitative simulation of geological effects [
3,
4]. The 3D geological modeling methods can be basically divided according to the data sources of modeling and the application of geological knowledge, as shown in
Table 1.
According to the source of modeling data, the modeling method for geological bodies mainly includes borehole-based modeling, cross-section based modeling, geological-map-based modeling and multi-source data modeling [
2]. (1) Borehole-based modeling is a method of directly fitting and generating stratum solid models from borehole data [
5]. This method is relatively mature and has a high degree of automation. However, due to the limitation of the number of boreholes, this method is mainly suitable for loose layer and key exploration mining area modeling; (2) Cross-section-based modeling is a method of generating a certain number of 2-D geological sections based on geological exploration data, and then generating a 3D geological model based on the constraints of the geological section [
7,
8,
9]. However, the generation of the geological section requires a lot of survey work and manual editing by experts, which means large investment, so it is also suitable for loose layer and key exploration mining area modeling; (3) The modeling based on the geological map uses the information on the plane geological map drawn by the direct geological survey data to generate a 3D geological model. Because the plane geological map combines the results of geological field survey work and the knowledge of geological experts, it reveals the information of geological structures in the region. In addition, the stratiform structure of formations is constrained by surface boundaries and attitude. On the premise of a lack of other geological data, it is an effective solution for constructing 3D regional geological model by using geological maps [
10]; (4) The modeling method with multi-source data integration is a method of fusing geological data from multiple sources such as boreholes and geological sections for 3D modeling [
6,
12,
13]. This method has advantages in the construction of complex geological bodies, and has higher accuracy. However, it is difficult to obtain different types of data with the same volume at the same time [
23]. In addition, different methods of acquiring modeling data and data standards will inevitably lead to certain information conflicts, which will affect the accuracy of the model to a certain extent [
24,
25], so it is also suitable for loose layer and key exploration mining area modeling.
The expression and application of geological knowledge is a powerful supplement to geological modeling. It can improve the accuracy and automation of modeling by making reasonably constraints on the geological interface shape according to the characteristics of the geological body [
26,
27]. By increasing the application of geoscience knowledge in the process of geological modeling, on the one hand, when the data are so sparse that it is difficult to build a reasonable model, specific geological knowledge can reduce the dependence on modeling data to a certain extent; on the other hand, knowledge of geological experts can be integrated in the modeling process to improve the construction accuracy of the model [
16,
28,
29]. In addition, different types of geological bodies have different genesis and tectonic forms, whose corresponding geoscience knowledges and modeling methods are also different. Therefore, it is an important basis for knowledge-driven modeling to effectively construct a geological knowledge base of a specific geological body type for knowledge application.
The application of knowledge in the modeling process can be divided into explicit application and implicit application. Explicit application uses an explicit definition of each object in the model and directly obtains the coordinates of key nodes, line segments and patches to form the surface of the strata [
30]. More important, this method is based on geological semantic used to define the rules of geology, and these rules are used to describe different geological events and the correlation between these events, and then this correlation is used to restrict the construction of geological model [
29]. In order words, this method explicitly considers the specific geological dimension of the model. For example, Perrin [
16] proposed a knowledge-driven approach for SEM that shares throughout the workflow with the geological interpretation related to this model. Hou et al. [
17] used the geological knowledge contained in the geological map to analyze the constraint relationship between strata and faults, and proposed a method to construct a 3D model of complex faults based on the planar geological map. In addition, Fernández et al. [
14,
15] and Vidal-Royo et al. [
18] carried out research on obtaining dip domain based on geological mapping and outcrop interpretations, which simplifies geometries to volumes in which bedding attitude is constant, and proved the effectiveness and high accuracy of this method in experiments on Ainsa basin and Pico del Águila anticline, respectively. The method can well meet the resolution required of the reconstruction on the irregular geometry of the syncline or anticline. Implicit application uses an implicit definition of geological interfaces, which are defined as the iso-surfaces of one or several scalar fields in 3D space [
30,
31,
32,
33,
34]. For example, De Kemp and Sprague [
19] fits the stratigraphic boundary based on the Bézier curve, and generates structural zones based on the attitude data to upgrade the planar geological map. Laurent et al. [
22] integrated the foliation data on fold structure in the numerical framework, which effectively improved the accuracy of fold structure modeling. When facing a modeling area with limited geological survey data for which the geological structure type is clear and relatively single, the explicit application of knowledge modeling method is more feasible; when facing a modeling area with relatively sufficient geological survey data which has relatively complex geological structure types, the implicit application of the knowledge modeling method is more feasible. However, when facing geological structures with complicated morphological ones, there are certain limitations in using explicit or implicit modeling based on geological maps alone [
30]. Explicit modeling is prone to generating a considerable number of topological errors, and the degree of automation is difficult to improve, requiring a lot of manual interaction or repair measures. Further, the mathematical curve or surface model constructed by implicit modeling is too complicated to fit the actual shape of the geological interface.
The dome structure originates from the rock deformation caused by the movement inside the earth [
35]. The structure is a kind of anticline with very significant non-cylindricity, whose rock layer is inclined outward and closed around and its geometric shape resembles an inverted grain bowl [
36]. When eroded, the older strata in the core of the dome structure are exposed, which is roug y in the form of several strata including others on the geological map, that is, the overlying strata surround the underlying strata [
20]. At the same time, the dome structure is a classic oil and gas mass closure, which finds it easy to accumulate oil and gas and mineral resources [
36]. Therefore, the 3D modeling of dome structures has certain geological research significance and application value. Its geological interface is curved, and more survey data are needed to control the lateral shape. However, as a kind of bedrock structure, the dome also lacks sufficient survey data, so it is necessary to apply geoscience knowledge to reduce the data dependence of its 3D modeling. As the main geological survey results, the geological map has a wide coverage, a large amount of information, and contains considerable professional knowledge of geology, which is very suitable as a knowledge base for modeling applications. Therefore, for the regional geological structure such as the dome structure where the geological survey data are insufficient, the knowledge-driven modeling method based on the geological structure knowledge on the plane geological map can increase the feasibility of constructing a reasonable model [
37]. Moreover, considering that the geological type of the modeling target in this paper is clear, and specific geoscience knowledge can be used to constrain the model, this paper mainly adopts explicit means in the application of geoscience knowledge. At the same time, in order to control the shape of the model more easily, knowledge is also implicitly used in some parts, such as generating side lines constrained by Bézier curves.
Further, for the dome structure strata with curved stratum boundaries and variable attitude, this paper mainly needs to use the knowledge of geology to solve the following three problems: (1) the attitude on the maps are scarce, which find it difficult to truly reflect the actual attitude of the stratum boundary; (2) separately deducing the stratigraphic interface from top edge points is likely to generate topology problems, such as self-intersection or burr of the stratigraphic interface; (3) simply deducing the stratigraphic side surface from the attitude of the stratigraphic boundary cannot reflect the true shape of the force and distortion in different parts of the stratum side.
The purpose of this paper is—taking the dome structure as an example based on the plane geological map and DEM—to study a method of using geoscience knowledge to make up for the lack of data and reasonably construct the 3D geological entity model in areas with sparse geological survey data. This paper will solve the problems above through an improved calculation method of attitude, the generation and optimization method of bottom boundary, and the refined modeling method on stratum side surface constrained by the Bézier curve. The organization of this paper is as follows:
Section 2 introduces the methodology,
Section 3 presents the experimental results,
Section 4 presents the discussion, and
Section 5 presents the conclusions and future work.
2. Methodology
This paper intends to study and realize an effective 3D modeling method of a dome structure based on DEM and digital geological maps. The modeling process mainly involves the following steps (
Figure 1): (1) adaptively calculating the attitude of points on the stratigraphic boundaries; (2) inferring and generating the bottom boundary of the model from the attitude data of the boundary points, and correcting the “self-intersecting” patches and burrs on the bottom boundary; (3) generating the model side surface constrained by Bézier curves based on the bottom boundary; (4) generating the top and bottom surfaces of the stratum; and (5) stitching the side, top, and bottom surfaces of the geological body to generate the final dome model.
2.1. Assumptions and Input Data
2.1.1. Assumptions
In reality, the dome structure may be affected by various geological processes and may have examples of various forms. Generally, affected by relatively single uplift-erosion event, the strata of the dome structure are in the form of several rings containing each other, which is the main form of this method. If the dome structure presents other forms due to later geological events, it needs to be restored to this form in a certain way. The situations that need to be dealt with are listed as follows: (1) if the fault causes serious displacement of the original geological structure, it is necessary to judge the feasibility of restoring the structure to the previous damage according to expert experience and restore it, and then use the method in this paper for modeling; (2) for the situation that magmatic rock or loose layer affects the complete exposure of bedrock, it is also necessary to be restored according to expert experience before modeling. Moreover, in order to evaluate the accuracy of the modeling cases in this paper, this paper selects the research area where the survey data can support the modeling of traditional modeling methods. Then, this paper constructs the model only based on sparse input data and compares it with the model constructed by traditional methods to analyze the accuracy.
The output of the solid model constructed in this paper is a surface model, that is, a closed space surface formed by TIN. A closed space surface represents a continuous stratum body. In order to construct this surface model, this paper firstly generates the exposed surface of the dome stratum, the upper and lower interface (that is, the inner and outer sides) and the artificially constrained bottom surface, and then stitches the surfaces to obtain the solid model of the dome structure.
2.1.2. Input Data
Strata: vector face data of the strata, in ESRI shapefile format, including the information of structural type and coordinates of all discrete points on the stratum boundary;
DEM: digital elevation model, a kind of image in tif format, from which it can obtain contour lines, vector linear data of elevation contour, containing elevation information, in ESRI shapefile format;
Attitude on map/measured attitude: the point data obtained after vectorization of the attitude elements marked on the plane geological map, in ESRI shapefile format, reflecting the attitude data measured at the marked position.
2.1.3. Method Parameters
Bottom elevation: the bottom elevation of the model set by the user is generally set according to the characteristics of the geological body. This value should not be set too small; otherwise, it will lead to low accuracy of the model. Furthermore, the maximum value should not be larger than the lowest part of the stratum boundary;
Burr angle threshold: an angle value set by the user according to the characteristics of the modeling object. When identifying the burr of the bottom edge, if the included angle of the bottom edge is smaller than this value, it is necessary to further judge whether the included angle is a burr. Specifically, setting this value requires experts to comprehensively consider the structural deformation, erosion degree and geological survey data of the modeling object.
2.2. Attitude Calculation
The bottom boundary, which constrains the side and bottom of the stratum, is the key factor that determines the overall modeling effect. Additionally, the basis and prerequisite for the inference of the stratigraphic bottom boundary is sufficient information on the attitude of stratigraphic boundary. However, by only relying on the small amount of measured attitude information on the geological map, it is difficult to meet the high requirements for the quantity and accuracy of stratigraphic attitude information.
For this reason, based on the existing methods, this paper has developed an adaptive method for calculating the attitude of each point on the stratigraphic boundary. The main steps include (
Figure 2): (1) based on the five geological attitude rules under different conditions proposed by Xu [
11], assign the measured attitude to corresponding stratigraphic boundary points; (2) extract the intersection points of the stratigraphic boundaries and the contour lines, and calculate the stratigraphic attitude according to the three-point or four-point method, and then insert intersection points on the stratigraphic boundaries; (3) calculate the attitudes of other boundary points based on linear interpolation, and correct abnormal attitudes.
2.2.1. Measured Attitude Conduction
The measured attitude points are distributed within the exposed range of each stratum in the plane geological map, indicating the attitude information of the stratum at the location. Ideally, each area with discontinuous attitude should have its attitude information. However, due to factors such as weathering of rock in the field, difficulty in distinguishing between cleavages and lineal planes, unexposed rock formations, constraints of geological survey fund and time, etc., the measurement of attitude is restricted.
According to the principle of ground stacking, if there is no major tectonic deformation in the later stage, excluding a certain degree of inclination, the interfaces of the sedimentary rock are basically parallel, and the measured attitudes of the outcropping parts are basically the same as those of the interfaces. Generally, both of the difference in the dip direction and angle between the several measured attitudes do not exceed 5° [
38]. Further, the mean value of the measured attitudes can be conducted to to the whole boundary of the stratum. Furthermore, if several measured attitude data points of a series of mutually conformable contact strata are basically consistent, the mean value of the measured attitudes can be conducted to all the boundaries of these strata. If a certain degree of tectonic deformation has occurred, the measured attitude values of these strata may be quite different. However, due to the conformable contact relationship between the strata, there is still a certain correlation between the measured attitudes and the strata on the direction of the dip line. Thus, the measured attitudes can be conducted along the dip line to the intersections of the boundaries and the dip lines. Similarly, the measured attitudes on several strata that are parallel unconformable can also be conducted to the intersections of the boundaries and the dip lines. (Xu Feng, 2014). The specific method is as follows: firstly, between the strata with conformable contact relationship or parallel unconformable relationship, pass the point with measured attitude and draw a straight line along the dip direction; secondly, assign the measured attitude to the intersection of the straight line and each stratigraphic boundary; then, the attitude of point P1 can be assigned to the intersection points P2, P3, and P4 (
Figure 3).
Besides stratigraphic attitude points, geological maps also contain attitude information of fault planes. A fault cuts a stratum and causes the stratum to break, forming a new stratum boundary, where the layer morphology is controlled by the fault and not transmitted to its neighbors, so the boundary here can directly give the fault attitude. As shown in
Figure 4, there are faults passing through the formation, that is, two red lines in the figure. The attitude of the stratum boundary is the same as that of the fault, and the attitude of the fault interface can be directly assigned to the corresponding boundary points.
2.2.2. Adaptively Indirect Calculation of Attitude
Traditional indirect calculation methods of attitude commonly use the four- or three-point method. Among them, the four-point method, namely the adjacent contour method, calculates the attitude of the strata from the four intersections of two contour lines with unequal elevations and the selected stratigraphic boundary [
39,
40]. The principle of the three-point method is to determine the shape of the plane by finding three points that are coplanar and non-collinear [
41]. The four-point method uses more than three points, which can reduce the attitude calculation error caused by point error to a certain extent through adjustment, so that the accuracy of the four-point method is higher than that of the three-point method. However, the conditions of the four-point method are harsher than that of the three-point method. Therefore, in this paper, when several calculation points meet the calculation conditions of the four-point method and the three-point method, the four-point method is preferred to calculate the attitude, otherwise the three-point method should be considered. (
Table 2). Both methods are suitable for calculating the attitude of stable rock stratum. Even for strata with severe tectonic deformation, the calculated attitude value can also reflect the overall attitude trend to some extent. Each small part of the stratum can be regarded as the plane with the same attitude. Therefore, based on several adjacent data points, three and four-point method can be used to carry out the adaptive calculation of the attitude of each part of the stratigraphic boundary in this paper. Therefore, this paper adopts the three-point method and the four-point method to carry out the adaptive calculation of the attitude of each part of the stratigraphic boundary. The specific steps are as follows: (1) extract the intersections of the stratigraphic boundaries and the contour lines as the calculation points; (2) take four consecutive calculation points on the same geological boundary, and judge whether the four-point method can be used to calculate attitude of the four points, and if so, calculate the attitude based on the four-point method, and go to step (4), otherwise go to step (3); (3) judge whether the three-point method can be used on the first three points of the four points, and if so, calculate; (4) judge whether there are four consecutive calculation points that are still not used for attitude calculation, if so, go to step (2).
2.2.3. Recognition and Correction of Abnormal Attitude
As a kind of anticline structure, the dome is inclined and closed [
36]. In other words, its dip direction around the boundary generally point outward relative to the stratigraphic boundary. However, the calculated attitude based on the measured attitude conduction, indirect method calculation, attitude interpolation or other related steps may have an inward dip direction, and this is an abnormal attitude for the dome structure. How to effectively correct these abnormal attitudes is the key issue to be solved in this section.
This paper proposes a method for correcting the attitude of data points by boundary curvature. This method, which satisfies the law of general boundary attitude on dome structure, can make the dip direction toward the outside of the stratum according to the local morphology of the boundary. Therefore, for abnormal situations that face inward, the inclination can be corrected based on the curvature method (
Figure 5).
2.3. Bottom Boundary Generation and Optimization
Near the stratum surfaces, the shapes of stratigraphic interfaces are constrained by the boundaries and their attitudes [
38]. In this paper, each corresponding bottom point is calculated from each stratum boundary point, and then the bottom boundary is obtained by connecting each bottom boundary point in turn. Therefore, using the position and attitude of the point on the stratum boundary, the bottom boundary point can be reasonably generated.
However, due to the approximate elliptical shape and different attitudes of the dome structures, the generated initial bottom boundary often has problems of self-intersections and burrs. Thus, optimizing the initial bottom boundary, in other words, eliminating the self-intersection and burrs on the initial bottom boundary, is the key to reasonably generating the bottom boundary and the most important process that affects the 3D modeling accuracy of the dome structure. These two aspects are discussed in detail in the two subsections, respectively.
2.3.1. Treatment of Bottom Side Self-Intersecting
According to the characteristic that monotonic chains never intersect themselves, Yang [
42] proposed a fast algorithm for judging the self-intersection of polylines based on the monotonic chain of computational geometry and an improved parallel line scanning algorithm. According to this algorithm, based on the monotonicity of the abscissa or ordinate of the adjacent boundary points (
Figure 6): firstly, divide the bottom edge into several monotonic chains; then, by pairwise judging whether the monotonic chains intersect, identify potential self-intersecting points; and finally, based on any self-intersecting point, divide the bottom edge into two parts, and then identify and eliminate the bottom edge “self-intersecting ring” according to the area of the enclosed polygon. Compared with the conventional method that finds the intersection of the line segments on bottom in pairs, this method has low complexity and high execution efficiency.
2.3.2. Treatment of Bottom Burrs
The bottom edge burr treated in this paper refers to the burr on the bottom edge calculated by a group of continuous data points on the top boundary without burr. It may cause the interface to form a long and narrow bending structure with sharp inward depression or outward protrusion in the longitudinal direction. The bottom burr is shown in
Figure 7a. Generally, the unexposed conformable contact stratum layer will not form burr without experiencing severe structural deformation. However, when the difference of the dip direction between two adjacent boundary points on top is large, burrs may appear on the bottom edge. In addition, after the process of eliminating self-intersection on the bottom edge, burrs may also appear. The existence of burrs due to the bottom boundary generation will cause the generated stratum interface not be smooth enough, which will have a greater impact on the quality of the constructed 3D dome model. It should be pointed out that those burrs (thin valleys, canyons, etc.) produced by erosion generally appear on the exposed stratum erosion surface, on which this method will not be used.
For this reason, a curve point extraction method is proposed in this paper and is based on the included angle of adjacent segments to straighten the burr line segment and generate a smooth bottom boundary. The specific idea of this processing method is as follows (
Figure 7): firstly, search for the boundary point with an angle less than a certain threshold on the bottom boundary, which can be judged as a “burr”; secondly, connect two adjacent boundary points of the current boundary point to fill the included the angle, and judge whether the burr is completely eliminated according to the included angle threshold. If not eliminated, repeat this operation until all burrs are eliminated.
2.4. Interface Generation under Bézier Constraint
Using a straight line connecting the corresponding points of the top and bottom boundaries, the formation side with straight side lines can be quickly generated. However, due to the different forces in the formation process, the side line of the dome structure is not a simple straight line determined by the boundary point and its attitude, but a smooth curve with a certain radian. Therefore, based on the corresponding boundary points of the top and bottom, a Bézier curve should be generated and discretized into several continuous line segments to obtain a relatively smooth side curve [
43,
44,
45].
The steps based on Bézier constraints are mainly as follows: (1) generating control points of a Bézier curve, based on the points on the top boundary and the parameters of the Bézier curve set by the user with reference to the actual shape of the dome; (2) generating the Bézier based on the control points curve with parameterized expression, which will be discretized into
t continuous line segments immediately by the user-specified number of pieces t; (3) connecting the
i-th point on each side line in turn
to obtain
closed curves; (4) Using the method in
Section 2.2 to eliminate the self-intersection and burrs of the closed curve, and store the points on the corresponding curve in the side point set; (5) constructing a Delaunay triangulation network as the side surface of stratum based on the points of top and bottom boundaries and the side points.
The parameters can be set reasonably according to the borehole or section data of the experimental area in order to make the model of the dome structure more in line with the actual shape. See
Section 4.1 for the specific method. The parameters that affect the generation of the Bézier curve are shown in
Table 3.
In the case of n = 3, correspondingly, there are four control points and two bending coefficients, and the generation process of the side curve is as follows:
- (1)
Obtain an upper boundary point of the stratum, that is, the first control point, and its attitude is , where is the dip direction and is the dip angle;
- (2)
Calculate the difference between and bottom elevation H;
- (3)
Calculate the position of the second control point
on the side line according to Equation (
1), while the attitude of
is
;
Among them, is the difference between and the bottom elevation set by the user, and i is control point number, [2,n 1];
- (4)
In the same way as in step (3), obtain the third control point and the fourth control point ;
- (5)
Based on all control points, generate the Bézier curve at ;
- (6)
Using Morphing technology, discretize the Bézier curve into a number of internal points on interface (
Figure 8) [
46].
- (7)
Connect each point on the curve in turn to obtain a side line.
2.5. Bottom Generation
The modeling process of the stratum bottom surface can be boiled down to establishing a boundary constraint triangulation network based on inner and outer boundaries of the bottom [
47]. Generally, in areas with small fluctuations, switching to a two-dimensional network construction method has less impact on the horizontal structure of the triangulation network, and because the dimension of the network construction process is lower, the computational complexity is much lower than that of the 3D method. Based on the above facts, this paper firstly extracts the inner and outer boundary points from a stratigraphic element and projects them on the horizontal plane. Secondly, it connects the boundary points in turn to obtain the inner and outer rings of the bottom polygon, and generates a two-dimensional bottom triangle based on the Delaunay rule. Finally, assign the elevation value of the bottom specified by the user to all the points of the triangle network to obtain the bottom model.
2.6. Top Generation
The top modeling process is similar to the bottom. Firstly, establish an initial triangulation based on the inner and outer boundaries of the strata; secondly, according to the sampling interval, extract sampling points from the contour lines within the exposure range of the corresponding strata, and inserts them into the initial triangulation under Delaunay’s criteria; finally, give the elevation value of the top surface to all the points of the triangle network, and then obtains the top surface model.
2.7. Model Stitching
After generating the interface, top, and bottom surfaces of each layer in the dome structure, these surfaces need to be further stitched into solid models of each stratum. The essence of model stitching is to merge points with the same name on different faces of the same entity.
In the model stitching process (
Table 4), if there is an underlying stratum
in the stratum
, the outer interface of
needs to be regarded as the inner interface of
. Then, based on the inner and outer interfaces, stitch top and bottom surfaces. Otherwise, only the outer interface and the top and bottom surfaces need to be stitched together.
In addition, the attribute information of each stratum model is obtained from the corresponding stratum elements of the plane geological map, and stored in the corresponding JSON format model attribute file together with the model ID, which can effectively support the associated query between the stratum 3D model and attribute information.
5. Conclusions
This paper studies the method of constructing a 3D solid model of the dome structure using relevant geological knowledge based on DEM and geological maps, which mainly includes three sub methods. Among them, the attitude calculation method based on stratum boundary points can more accurately obtain the attitudes of the dome stratum boundary and can effectively identify and correct abnormal attitudes, which can solve the problem of sparse attitude and precisely control the 3D morphology of the stratum; the self-intersection and burr processing of the bottom boundary can effectively eliminate the self-intersecting surface and the narrow gap on the side surface of the stratum; and the modeling method of the side surface constrained by the Bézier curve can effectively control the morphology of the stratum side surface.
This paper selects the Wulongshan dome and Richat structure as the experimental area. The experimental results show that the 3D model of the dome structure constructed in this paper using geological maps is basically in line with the real development form of the experimental area. Therefore, in the absence of borehole data and section data, the method of this paper can effectively model the dome structure. However, the method in this paper is susceptible to loose layer coverage and volcanic intrusion in the study area. Moreover, since the accuracy of the deduction of stratigraphic inference decreases as the depth increases, this method is mainly suitable for modeling shallow parts of geological bodies.
The method of this paper is helpful for research on the morphology and geological characteristics of dome structures and promotes the exploration and utilization of natural resources in the region where a dome structure is developed. In addition, the basic modeling idea of the 3D modeling method of a dome structure based on a geological map and DEM in this paper also has a certain reference value for the 3D modeling of other geological structures, such as fault structure, horizontal structure, fold structure and so on, based on sparse geological survey data.