BEACON: Bayesian Experimental design Acceleration with Conditional Normalizing flows - a case study in optimal monitor well placement for CO2 sequestration

CO2 sequestration is a crucial engineering solution for mitigating climate change. However, the uncertain nature of reservoir properties, necessitates rigorous monitoring of CO2 plumes to prevent risks such as leakage, induced seismicity, or breaching licensed boundaries. To address this, project managers use borehole wells for direct CO2 and pressure monitoring at specific locations. Given the high costs associated with drilling, it is crucial to strategically place a limited number of wells to ensure maximally effective monitoring within budgetary constraints. Our approach for selecting well locations integrates fluid-flow solvers for forecasting plume trajectories with generative neural networks for plume inference uncertainty. Our methodology is extensible to three-dimensional domains and is developed within a Bayesian framework for optimal experimental design, ensuring scalability and mathematical optimality. We use a realistic case study to verify these claims by demonstrating our method's application in a large scale domains and optimal performance as compared to baseline well placement.