Abstract:
Inverse modelling forced itself on the attention of scientists in the
1960s with the advent of satellites and other revelatory technologies, despite
their putative ill-posedness, when it became clear that estimation of parameters
of a system not in themselves directly observed but extractable from their ~ignatures
in measured data, constituted an ineluctable problem of modern society.
This paper begins by formulating the basic statement of inverse problems which
have a generic form and leads through philosophical and analytical approaches
to their possible solutions that are inherently non-unique. Finally, an example
is provided for inverse modelling of the shear wave velocity structure of the
crust beneath the ancient granites around Hyderabad from an analysis of reverberations
caused by it that appear in the early part of broadband seismograms.
