Picture this: an accurate map of a large underground oil reservoir that can guide engineers’ efforts to coax the oil from the vast rocky subsurface into wells where it can be pumped out for storage or transport. Researchers in MIT’s Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering have developed technology that can generate such a map, which has the potential to significantly increase the amount of oil extracted from reservoirs. The new technology uses the digital image compression technique of JPEG to create realistic-looking, comprehensive maps of underground oil reservoirs using measurements from scattered oil wells. These maps would be the first to provide enough detail about an oil reservoir to guide oil recovery in the field in real time. Read more.