The chapter attempts to produce a few guidelines for pressure prediction. These guidelines for best practices are divided into three broad categories: subsurface geological habitat for pore pressure (geology), physics of pore pressure generation (models), and technology for subsurface prediction (tools). An integrated workflow should satisfy four important criteria: (1) the model should be geologically consistent, conforming to the geologic history; (2) model variability should be constrained by bounds derived from physical understanding of the rocks; (3) the model should agree with all available data from wells and seismic measurement; and (4) modeling uncertainty should be rigorously quantified. The chapter describes various approches for uncertainty quantification for pore pressure prediction.

This chapter describes examples of basin modeling in 1D and 2D and shows the power of basin models to predict pore pressure. The fundamental conservation laws and partial differential equations used in basin modeling are presented. Mathematical derivations for 1D shale-on-shale and sand-on-shale compaction and pore pressure models are given in detail. While seismic models for pore pressure prediction predict pore pressure given present-day geology, basin modeling provides an alternate technique that describes the pore pressure distribution using transient models that depend on fluid and heat flow during geologic times along with other phenomena, such as changes in facies and geologic structures in paleotimes. So this approach not only tells us what the pore pressure is today but allows us to investigate the effect of uncertainties in geology in the past and their imprint on the present-day pressure distribution.