To accurately locate microearthquakes that are genetically related to hydraulic fracture stimulation, a thorough knowledge of the velocity structure between monitoring and fracturing treatment wells is essential. Very fast simulated annealing (VFSA) is implemented to invert for a flat-layered velocity model between wells using perforation or string-shot data. A two-point ray-tracing method is used to find the ray parameter p for a ray traveling from a source to a receiver. The original traveltime-calculation formula is modified to account for the borehole source-receiver geometry. VFSA is used as a tool to optimize P- and S-wave velocities simultaneously. Unlike previous applications of VFSA, two improvements result from a new study: (1) both P- and S-wave arrival-time misfits are considered in a joint-objective function, and (2) P- and S-wave velocities are perturbed simultaneously during annealing. The inverted velocities follow the true values closely with a very small root-mean-square error, indicating the inverted model is close to the global minimum solution whose rms error should be zero for synthetic examples. Data noise contaminates inverted models, but not substantially in synthetic test results. A comparison of models inverted using VFSA and Occam's inversion technique indicates that inverted models using VFSA are superior to those using Occam's method in terms of velocity accuracy.

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