Boundless Electrical Resistivity Tomography

BERT the user tutorial

Thomas G
unther & Carsten R
ucker
August 30, 2011
version 1.0

In this tutorial we like to show the users of the BERT inversion how to work
with our software. Some small but instructive examples, all real field cases, are
presented to show how the different options in the configuration file can be used to
yield case-specific inversion results.
The examples start from 2d inversion of surface measurements with and without
topography. We show how to include structural information and how buried electrodes are handled. 3d inversion is done on a flat surface and topography. For the
latter two main techniques are presented.
Also, measurements on closed objects, such as trees, humans, soil columns and
model tanks are shown. Finally we show how to handle time-lapse resistivity measurements. The user is invited to follow by processing the data in the examples
directory.

Leibniz Institute for Applied Geophysics, Hannover

Institute of Geology and Geophysics, University of Leipzig

Contents
1. Introduction
1.1. BERT, DCFEMLib, GIMLi - Nomen est omen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
1.2. Options and commands . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
1.3. Visualization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
2. 2D surface measurements
2.1. A flat surface example . . . .
2.2. Regularisation and data fit .
2.3. Mesh quality and refinement
2.4. Incorporation of topography .
2.5. Structural constraints . . . .
2.6. A sophisticated example: The

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3. 3D surface measurements
3.1. Flat surface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
3.2. 3D Topography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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4. Closed geometries
4.1. 2d example - tree tomography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
4.2. 3d closed geometry - model tanks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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5. Buried electrodes
5.1. 2D cross-hole data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
5.2. 3D-Crosshole measurements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
5.3. Topography and buried electrodes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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6. Time-lapse ERT
6.1. Crosshole timelapse measurements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
6.2. Soil column measurements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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7. Concluding remarks and outlook

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A. BERT for Windows users

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B. Files and programs

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C. Complete list of options and their default values

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D. BERT version 2 using GIMLi

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1. Introduction
1.1. BERT, DCFEMLib, GIMLi - Nomen est omen
Direct current electrical measurements are used in a wide range of applications such as medical
imaging, geophysical surface or subsurface measurements or the investigation of trees and soil
probes. This inverse problem is known under the terms ERT (electrical resistivity tomography),
ERI (... imaging), EIT (... impedance tomography) or DC resistivity inversion. The aim of
our software is to present a unique solution for all these cases.
Main advantage is the possibility to work on arbitrary geometries. Therefore we decided to
consequently use unstructured finite element meshes for forward calculation as well as for the
parameter identification. By the use of triangles (2d) and tetrahedrons (3d) we can follow
any geometry of the subsurface, probe or any structural information we have about the object
to be investigated. Due to this generality we decided to call it BERT - Boundless Electrical
Resistivity Tomography.
BERT is a part of the software library DCFEMLib - Direct Current Finite Element Method
Library. It is currently newly developed and will be called GIMLi - Generalized Inversion and
Modelling Library. The latter is a much more general approach for arbitrary tomographic
methods, as the functionality is growing BERT will more and more migrate to GIMLi1 .
DCFEMLib is licensed under the GPL (GNU public license). Our aim is to give back to
the academic community without letting people earning money by just clicking a button.
Additionally to the library itself it comprises executables for ERT modelling and inversion, tools
for generating mesh input (the so-called poly-tools) and tools applying the mesh generator.
The theory and technology of BERT is described in our GJI paper (G
unther et al., 2006)
and bases on the finite element modelling techniques described by R
ucker et al. (2006). It
is represented by a triple-grid scheme: Most inversion algorithm use a dual-grid scheme, i.e.
the forward calculation is calculated on a finer mesh. We add another one in order to use a
secondary field approach and thus have a very fast forward calculation. Figure 1 shows the
three grids: On a coarse and resolution-dependent grid the parameters are defined. On a
globally refined and prolonged mesh the forward calculation is done. And a very fine primary
mesh is used to calculate the primary potentials (for a homogeneous subsurface), but only once
directly after the mesh creation.

Figure 1: The three meshs of inversion for a 2d example, from G

unther et al. (2006)
The overall scheme is visualised in Figure 2. It starts with the generation of the three meshes.
Then the primary potentials are calculated and interpolated onto the secondary mesh. From
this geometric factors are derived yielding the apparent resistivity and the sensitivity matrix
is created for the homogeneous case. Finally the actual inversion is carried out: An inverse
1

See appendix for doing ERT inversions with GIMLi.

sub-problem is used to update the resistivity model, a forward calculation is carried out and
checked against the data. The latter is done until the data are fitted well or the process
stagnates.
Topography

Electrodes

Parameter mesh

Primary mesh

Secondary mesh

Data

Configuration factor

Primary potential

Apparent resistivity

Inversion

Constraints

Sensitivity

Forward operator

Inverse subproblem

Check

Solution

Figure 2: The BERT inversion scheme, from G

unther et al. (2006): the geometrical information
is used to prepare the actual inversion (rectangle).
BERT is available under Linux and Windows2 , either from pre-compiled binaries or selfcompiled code3 . The paths to the binaries and the library must be known, e.g. by setting
$ export PATH=$PATH:/path/to/dcfemlib/bin
$ export LD LIBRARY PATH=$LD LIBRARY PATH:/path/to/dcfemlib/lib

1.2. Options and commands

The inversion itself is controlled by the program invert, which reads the so called configuration
(cfg) file. In the cfg file all necessary information is stored in form of lines consisting of
KEY=value type, as in bash everything behind the #-sign is ignored and can be used for
comments. Note that the key must be uppercase. There is only one mandatory key: the
DATAFILE key holding the name of the data file. Other important keys are DIMENSION (2 or
3) and TOPOGRAPHY (0 or 1, meaning false or true). We suggest to create a new directory for
each problem or also for different strategies to solve it. The data file must be in the unified
resistivity.net format (see www.resistivity.net?unidata), but so far without the topography
part and the end. DC2dInvRes and DC3dInvRes (graphical FD-based inversion software also
available on www.resistivity.net) can easily be used to convert from different formats, such
as res2dinv or different equipment files (ABEM,Syscal,Geotom,Sting,4pointLight). Use the
Save ohm file call for doing so.
For list of possible options (with default values) see appendix C or call invert opts. However only few of them are of frequent use4 . In order to create a new project there are special
2

See appendix A for using BERT in Windows.

See www.resistivity.net for information about how to obtain the binaries/codes and to compile the code
4
In order to change default options permanently, we suggest to create a file $HOME/.bertrc that will be read if
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commands for the individual tasks, namely invertNew2d, invertNew2dTopo, invertNew3d, invertNew3dTopo, invertNew2dCirc and invertNew3dCyl for the cases 2d/3d with or without
topography and for circle/cylinder geometry. For example,
$ invertNew2d datafile.dat > inv.cfg
creates a new configuration file inv.cfg with the lines DATAFILE=datafile.dat, DIMENSION=2
and TOPOGRAPHY=0, but also adds a lot of possible options for this case with an explanation,
most of them inactive/commented. The user can now (or later) change the options and run
single steps or the whole of inversion by
$ invert cfgfile commands
where cfgfile is the configuration file and commands can consist of the following:
all makes all, that is probably the first step in most (at least small) cases
meshs just makes the meshes, so that these can be optimized (suggested for bigger problems)
nomeshs do everything else but the meshes (after a successful mesh generation)
primPot interpolate calculates primary potentials and interpolates it to the secondary mesh
calcSensM actual inversion including sensitivity calculation (first inversion)
calc inversion with changed inversion options
newPara after creating a new parameter model (keeps primary mesh and potential)
save saves all important results (model&response for each iteration, log file, cfg file, meshes)
in a directory called result<date> <time>
clean cleans the directory from temporary results
mrproper deletes all stuff except input and result directories (releases disk memory fully)
show creates a vtk file (can be used in the main directory or in a result directory)

1.3. Visualization
BERT creates a lot of files that can be used for post-processing, see appendix. You can visualize
in-place or save the state first using invert inv.cfg save. A result-directory is created out of the
model file data and time and the files are moved in. Later you can change into the directory
to do the visualization. There are several ways for doing it:
1. The command invSummary creates a pdf with all essential information and figures. This
requires DCMatLab installed and is a easy method but only feasible for 2D.
2. You can use DCMatLab directly using
>> Mesh=loadmesh(mesh/meshParaDomain.bms); %loads mesh into struct
>> res=load(model_iter.final); %loads ascii resistivity vector
>> tripatchmod(Mesh,res); % help tripatchmod for options
present. Typical entries are, e.g., SENSMATMAXMEM=3000 (available memory in MB), LINSOLVER=2
(for LDL instead of CHOLMOD or taucs), or favourite mesh options

3. There is a graphical tool called bert2dpost for doing it automatically, where you can
specify some options.
4. For 3D but also 2D you can call invertinv.cfg show which will create a file showmodel.vtk
and opens ParaView with it. After show you can specify a different model file.
Paraview5 is a highly sophisticated and free tool for 3d (and 2d) visualisation. It handles
both complete inversion results (obtained by invert cfgfile show), mesh inputs (*.poly, to be
converted by polyConvert -V -S to vtk or stl) and meshes (to be converted by meshconvert, if
not already done). In order to have a quick look at 3d meshes when finding optimal parameters,
we also suggest MEDIT6 , a free and fast 3d viewer.
The usual proceeding is (i) create meshes and look whether they are suitable, (ii) run a full
inversion with all, (iii) look at the results (show, ParaView), (iv) refine options and do a calc,
save good results using save. The first step is usually omitted for small projects. We now
start to prepare and run inversions using the exemplary files in dcfemlib/examples/inversion,
starting from easy-going to complicated ones.

2. 2D surface measurements
2.1. A flat surface example
The example in dcfemlib/examples/inversion/2dflat/gallery was friendly provided by the University of Mining and Technology, Freiberg (F. Donner). It is a very small profile over a
known mining gallery that is used for draining water out of the mines. It represents a perfect
two-dimensional anomaly since it strikes perpendicular to the profile and is a 2x2m cavity.
On a profile using 21 electrodes with 2m spacing, dipole-dipole measurements have been applied, the data quality was very good. The input in the data file gallery.dat is already the
apparent resistivity. Standard deviations have been measured and 1% were added.
We create a configuration file using
$ invertNew2d gallery.dat > inv.cfg
just holding the data file and the dimension. Figure 3 shows the result of invert inv.cfg all
with default options that converged with a chi-squared value of 0.99 (data fitted within error
bounds). It clearly shows the cavity at about 20 m and another anomaly whose origin is not
completely clear from 2d measurements. See section 3.1 for inversion of a 3d data set.
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[email protected]

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see ParaView home page www.paraview.org

INRIA Rocquencourt, see http://www-rocq.inria.fr/gamma/medit/medit.html

2.2. Regularisation and data fit

We now might to change the characteristics of the model. The most important key for that is
the regularization parameter LAMBDA. It controls the strengths of the smoothness constraints
and thus defines how smooth the model will be. Therefore we test different values by commenting out the line with the parameter LAMBDA and setting it once to 200 and once to 2 instead of
the default value of 20. After changing it we call
$ invert inv.cfg calc
and save the results as well using save.
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Figure 4: Result for a regularization parameter of 200 (left) and 2 (right).

Figure 4 shows the result for the two cases. The one for = 200 is clearly over-smoothed and
cannot fit the data appropriately (2 = 4.4, RMS=2.5%). The low value can fit the data but
produces too much small-scaled anomalies that are not necessary.
Note that these data have a very good quality documented in the error values between 1 and
2.3%. An over-estimation of the errors will lead (if 2 = 1) to an over-smoothed result as
well. Errors (in the meaning of how well can I fit the data) should therefore be measured or
estimated by reciprocal data or repetition. Always add a fixed value that will account for error
sources outside our measurements7 . In the absence of errors in the data file an estimation is
made using a fixed percentage (INPUTERRLEVEL) and a voltage error (INPUTERRVOLTAGE). If
the current is not in the file, a value of 100 mA is assumed. For different current strengths the
voltage error has to be adapted.
Alternatively to a fixed regularization it can be optimized using the L-curve by LAMBDAOPT=1.
To decrease the regularization parameter in the course of iterations (cooling scheme) by, e.g.,
the factor 0.8 use LAMBDADEDREASE=0.8.

2.3. Mesh quality and refinement

The depth of the modelling domain is by default automatically determined based on 1d sensitivity studies, but can be adjusted using PARADEPTH. The value of PARABOUNDARY defines how
far (in % of the extension, default=5) the boundary is outside of the electrodes. You might of
course think that the triangles in Figure 3 are quite coarse and that we can resolve the cavity
better. Although we dont need it in this case according to Occams razor, we illustrate how
to do it.
Generally, all meshes must be fine near the electrodes (to achieve high accuracy in the forward
calculation and because the resolution is high there) and coarse at the boundaries. The fineness is achieved by placing additional nodes in the vicinity of the electrodes, PARADX holds the
distance (in electrode spacings a). A value of 0.2 means two points are created 0.2a to the
right and left of each electrode. By EQUIDISTBOUNDARY=1 several points are equally distributed.
7

Therefore DCxdInvRes ask for an error percentage to be added to the measured if those are too small.

Usually the points are linearly interpolated, SPLINEBOUNDARY=1 forces a spline interpolation,
which is useful for round geometries or smooth topography.
The coarse-ness towards the boundary is controlled by the mesh quality PARA2DQUALITY, which
denotes a minimum angle. The higher the quality is, the more accurate are the results but
with an increasing number of cells and thus run-time. In triangle8 (Shewchuk, 1996) version
1.6, our favoured 2d mesh generator, the range goes from 25-30 (bad quality) to 34-35 (good
quality). Default value is 33.8, a trade-off between accuracy and run-time. Another way of
avoiding a too coarse mesh is the maximum cell size by setting PARAMAXCELLSIZE (in m2 ).
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Figure 5: Meshes with different parameters: default values dx=0.2 & q=33.8 (top left), dx=0.2
& q=33 (top right), dx=0.2 & q=34.5 (center left), dx=0.2 equidist & q=33.8 (center
right), dx=0.3 equidist & q=33.8 (bottom left), dx=0.5 equidist & q=33.8 (bottom
right)
In Figure 5 the resulting parameter meshes for different settings are displayed. A lower quality
is only recommended in case of topography. A too large quality value produces nicer triangles
but can lead to heterogeneous mesh density even for equidistant electrodes. The EQUIDISTANT
switch produces a nice near-surface triangulation that can yield too much parameters. The
latter can be avoided by a larger PARADX value. Finally the user has to find the optimum
settings for his case (and taste).

2.4. Incorporation of topography

In 2d inversion, topography is easily integrated by setting the heights of the electrodes. All
the rest should be done automatically, if necessary, additional electrodes must be inserted.
However, rarely all electrodes will be measured topographically. Often it is sufficient to have
a few points. Note that in the current stage BERT requires the topographical information in
the first section, not at the end of the file. For this case we recommend the use of DC2dInvRes
(G
unther, 2007) that will roll the positions along the surface. For this task, use Data:Save
Ohm file and specify whether the x values are along measure tape or real x.
The slagdump profile
The data in dcfemlib/examples/inversion/2dtopo/slagdump were friendly provided by the
Federal Institute of Geology and Natural Resources (BGR), Hannover. It was measured by
8

see http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~quake/triangle.research.html

M. Furche and is one of several profiles over a slag dump. A Wenner array with a = 2 m
spacing was applied yielding 222 data points. The topography was measured at 8 points by
levelling and appended to the original file before converting it with DC2dInvRes. We initialize
the inversion with standard options using the command:
$ invertNew2dTopo slagdump.ohm > inv.cfg
Note that this produces additional lines in the file for the primary mesh. Similar to the parameter mesh, the PRIMDX value specifies the (absolute, not relative!) refinement at the electrodes
and PRIM2DQUALITY defines the mesh growth. Additionally, we decide by PRIMP2MESH whether
the primary potentials shall be computed by quadratic shape functions. As stated by R
ucker
et al. (2006) those are more efficient. The necessary refinement for a P2 mesh is about a/10
and a/100 for a P1 mesh.
Figure 6 shows the topographic effect and the resistivity image. The upper pseudo-section
shows the apparent resistivities using flat-earth geometry factors. The middle one is the pure
geometric effect, t = Gf lat utopo ( = 1S/m), and the lower image is based on the geometric
factors out of the primary potential. Several anomalies can be explained solely by topographical
undulations. The resistivity distribution shows a conductive interior and a resistive hard pan.
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[email protected]

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Figure 6: Topographic effect and inversion result of the slagdump site.

2.5. Structural constraints

Often there is additional information about the subsurface. An incorporation into the inversion
process is always to be preferred over a comparison of the results. In (G
unther and R
ucker,
2006) we presented a more general minimisation approach that allows for arbitrary weights for
each boundary between model cells. In existence of a known discontinuity this can be set to
zero allowing for (but not enforcing) an arbitrary jump in resistivity.
The following example (dcfemlib/examples/inversion/inversion/2dstruct) was measured
and friendly provided by the K-UTec GmbH Sondershausen (T. Schicht). Aim of the study was
bedrock detection carried out with resistivity and refraction seismics. The velocity structure
showed to be a very clear 2-layer case. So the result (layer boundary) of the refraction study
can serve as structural information.
The file bedrock.xz contains the course of the boundary as x-z pairs. We now include this
file into the configuration file using the INTERFACE option. In order to compare the result with

and without structure we call

$ invertNew2d bedrock.dat > inv.cfg
$ invert inv.cfg all save
$ echo INTERFACE=bedrock.xz >> inv.cfg
$ invert inv.cfg newPara save
The latter (newPara) switch is used if we change parameterisation. So the primary mesh and
potentials do not have to be calculated anew, but they have only to be interpolated onto the
forward mesh and the sensitivities are re-calculated as well. Figure 7 shows the subsurface
images without and with the structural information.

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Figure 7: Resistivity distribution without (left) and with (right) structural information.
Obviously the additional information leads to a much clearer image of the subsurface. At most
positions there is a sharp resistivity contrast at the boundary. However at some positions there
is either a difference to velocity or the refraction result is ambiguous.

2.6. A sophisticated example: The lake case

The last 2d example was measured by the Leibniz Institute for Applied Geosciences, Hannover
(W. S
udekum and T. G
unther). Its aim was to delineate sedimentation structures beneath the
Feldungel lake near Osnabrueck. Electrodes have been spread out from one shore along the lake
bottom onto the other shore. The spacing was 2m and both Wenner-alpha and Wenner-beta
were measured and combined. Since the lake resistivity is known (22.5 m) this is excluded
from inversion by hand:
1. We put the electrode positions (0 to -2.6m height) and resistances into the input file
2. We start as for a topographic case and generate the meshing input
$ invert inv.cfg domain
3. As a result we obtain the poly file mesh/mesh.poly which we copy to mymesh.poly9
4. We need to add the water surface by an edge between the left and the right shore. A
view into the poly file shows these being represented by the points 3 and 138. So add
another edge at the end of the edges (line 303) by inserting the line 151 3 138 -1 (number
n1 n2 edgemarker) and increase the number of edges in line 152 from 151 to 152

see triangle page http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~quake/triangle.research.html for file description

10

5. Finally we add a region marker somewhere in the lake with marker 1 (not inverted) by
appending the line 2 50 -1 1 0.0 (number x y marker maxtrisize) and increasing the
number of regions from 2 to 3.
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Figure 8: Representation of the input PLC for the lake case.

Figure 8 shows a section of the input PLC (the outer space needed for forward calculation
is much bigger). All nodes are denoted by a cross. The electrodes, which are refined by
additional nodes on both sides, are marked by a circle. They form the topography as in the
2d topographic examples. The red rectangle defines the region to be inverted. Therefore the
marker 2 (inversion region) is in this region and the marker 1 (no inversion) is outside.
We use this altered poly file in the inversion by introducing into the cfg file
PARAGEOMETRY=cp mymesh.poly mesh/mesh.poly
This means that mesh.poly is created by copying mymesh.poly. Alternatively we can put here
a shell script or matlab call that makes up our geometry. Furthermore we add the following
options (obsolete in GIMLi due to better automatics and the region technique):
TOPOGRAPHY=0
SPACECONFIG=2
RHOSTART=22.5
NOPROLONGATION=1
SURFACESMOOTH=0

#
#
#
#
#

ensures that the primary potentials are really analytic

ensures that mirror sources will be used (obsolete?)
Start(=background) resistivity
no resistivity prolongation (outside & lake stay const)
prevent smoothing (edge swapping possible)

Furthermore we use the following options

ZPOWER=0.3
# enhances layered (sediment) structures
OVERRIDEERROR=1 # do not use the measured errors in file (optimistic), but:
INPUTERRLEVEL=2
# 2% plus
INPUTERRVOLTAGE=20e-6 # 20 microvolts
and the inversion converges at 1 < 2 < 2. Since the data file also contains induced polarisation
(IP) phases, they are automatically inverted at the end using a single inverse sub-step with the
same options as for the amplitude. Figure 9 shows resistivity and phase distribution. The lake
sediments show generally by low resistivities and phases. Particularly the youngest sediments
are almost as conductive as the water. Below different sediment layers are visible giving hints
how the historic topography was covered by sediments step by step.
Note that for pure underwater measurements there is an additional option UNDERWATER which
forms the sea bottom topography by the electrodes and adds the water surface at z = 0
automatically.

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20

30

40

50

60

70

x/m

90

z/m
10
15

[email protected]

Ohmm
25.1

10

31.6

39.8

20

50.1

30

63.1

79.4

40

100

50

126

158

60

200

251

70

x/m

90

z/m
10
15

[email protected]

Figure 9: Inversion result of the water case: resistivity (top) and phase (bottom). Note that
the water is not part of the inversion mesh and thus not plotted.

3. 3D surface measurements
3D surface measurements can be carried out in several variants:
1. Layout of an electrode grid. However, due to the limited electrode number grids are
restricted to small areas.
2. Parallel (and perpendicular) profiles along the coordinate axes.
3. Profiles in arbitrary directions due to accessibility limits.
4. Non-profile layout, e.g. large-scale dipole-dipole experiments.
In any case, the electrode positions and measurements must be defined according to the unified
data format. The data for the first two types can be easily organized by hand. For number 3
(and 2) we suggest to prepare 2d files and to write a pro-file containing of lines with the 2d file
name and x-y pairs of points where the line is going. This file can be read into DC3dInvRes
G
unther (2008) and used to write the 3d file. In case of topography it is best to do the tape
correction on the 2d files before using DC2dInvRes and Export Ohm.
The most flexible element in 3d is the tetrahedron. The tetrahedralization is done by a mesh
generator. Out choice is Tetgen (Si, 2008), a free and versatile quality mesh generator. The
quality measure is different from 2d and describes a radius-to-edge ratio, note that small values
point to higher quality. Appropriate values for (primary field) forward calculation are 1.12 to
1.2, for the inverse (and thus secondary) mesh values of 1.2-1.5 are appropriate, the keys are
called PRIM3DQUALITY and PARA3DQUALITY.

12

3.1. Flat surface

In dcfemlib/examples/inversion/3dflat/gallery is a data set in the field where the 2dflat example
(section 2.1) was measured. It comprises a grid of 9x14 electrodes. Dipole-dipole measurements
have been measured on all x and y profiles. In the data file is an error of constant 0.0 that will
be overrided automatically. An inversion project file with default parameters is created by:
$ invertNew3d rothschoen.dat > inv.cfg
The inversion is then fully run (with command all) converging to a chi-squared misfit of about
2 (rrms=4-5%). In order to fit the data better, the regularization parameter is decreased using
LAMBDA=5, which leads to an relative rms error of about 3% (2 = 1). Another way is to use
an anisotropic regularization (CONSTRAINT=6) also leading to 2 1. (Note that constraint 6
is somewhat deprecated and replaced by the ZPOWER options, where we can control the flatness
continuously. Try out different ZPOWER values between 0 and 1.)
The result is saved and converted to a vtk file10 using
$ invert inv.cfg show

Figure 10: Inversion result of the 3d gallery data set using a smoothed iso-surface of 650m
and a Plane Clip, the red spheres are the used electrodes.
Figure 10 shows a Paraview visualisation that has been created by the following steps: i) Cell
Data To Point Data, ii) Clip by Scalar 650 (m), iii) Extract Surface, iv) Smooth Surface, v)
Another Clip based on Cell2Point with Plane, vi) representation of the input as Outline and
Cube Axes. The color bar is logarithmic with a manual range of 100-1000m. The electrodes
have been included as point vtk file and displayed by Glyph as Spheres of radius 0.05. After
some exercise the reader will be able to create nice images, plots and calculate results such as
extensions or volumes of geological bodies.

3.2. 3D Topography
The definition of a 3d topography is much more complicated than in 2d, where every shape
can be described by a simple polygon. The input PLC consists of faces instead of edges, the
10

can be displayed in 3d software ParaView, see http://www.paraview.org

13

resulting poly file has a similar but different format11 . Generally the proceeding is the following:
i) create a flat surface mesh, ii) interpolate heights from topographic information, iii) make
a small (inversion mesh) and a large (forward mesh) box around it, iv) make refinement, if
necessary, and v) create the mesh using tetgen.
For specifying topography, there are two different ways:
the electrodes in the data file have an elevation and all other points are interpolated
there is a digital elevation model (DEM) or at least a list of measured topo points (in a
3-column file containing x,y and z)
Whereas the first case is sufficient for smooth topography and/or dense electrode coverage,
the latter is more general. The topographic points are Delaunay triangulated. For every point
of the meshes, also the electrodes, the elevation is linearly interpolated. Therefore electrodes
with measured elevations should be included in the topo file as well to make sure their z values
are correct. We specify this topographical list by the line TOPOPOINTS=filename.
In dcfemlib/examples/inversion/examples/acucar there is a project measured by the Federal
Institute of Geology and Natural Resources (BGR) Hannover (M. Furche12 ). The site is an
old slag dump that comprises a topography reminding on the sugar hat in Rio. Two resistivity
profiles have been measured crossing the top of the isolated hill. Another profile was realised
around the hill in a more or less constant elevation. Although this is not a dense sampling as
an electrode grid it should be sufficient to obtain a rough image.
Additionally to the electrodes, some topographical points have been measured and put into
the file points.xyz. So we create a new project using
$ invertNew3dTopo acucar.ohm > inv.cfg
and add the line TOPOPOINTS=points.xyz to the model. If we now call invert inv.cfg meshs
we see the mesh does not show the hill, since the topography overrides the electrode elevation.
Therefore we have to add the electrode definition (lines 3-230) to the topography file and see
then the hill (Figure 11 left). However due to the point density the electrode line appears as
a sharp edge that is not really the truth but sufficient in this case.
In other cases we might have a digital elevation model. In order to show this on the same
example, we created one by cubic interpolation of the available points on a regular grid of 2m
spacing. In order to avoid interpolation errors between the electrodes we created a polygon
file poly.xyz for the three profiles13 and introduce it by TOPOPOLY=poly.xyz. Figure 11 shows
the surface mesh of both variants. The sharp edges are now disappeared.
Finally the inversion result is visualised in Figure 12. It shows a conductive interior of the slag
dump and different sediments at the surface, e.g. a resistive top. Of course the data coverage
is low between the profiles and at the model boundaries. Therefore the model becomes more
or less interpolated by the smoothness constraints.

11

See http://tetgen.berlios.de
Now at Leibniz institute of Applied Geosciences
13
Several polygons are separated by a blank line.
12

14

Figure 11: Surface mesh for the point-wise topographic information (left) and the digital elevation model (right), the electrodes are shown as red points.

Figure 12: Inversion result of the 3dtopo case.

4. Closed geometries
Closed geometries are actually easier than open ones since we do not need a mesh prolongation
and two different regions. However since the whole boundary is of Neumann type, we must
ensure two additional conditions that are not necessary in the open case:
The current cannot vanish in infinity, therefore we must use dipole sources, e.g. by a
reference current node.
Since only derivatives are present in the boundary value problem, we must make the
forward solution unique, e.g. by adding a reference potential node, whose potential is
forced to zero.

4.1. 2d example - tree tomography

For 2d bodies the electrodes are usually on the boundary and the PLC can easily be formed by a
polygon through it as in the 2d mesh generation. If additional points between the electrodes are

15

needed, they can be introduced by fake electrodes. For tree (or human) geometry a dedicated
GUI named TreeBERT (before DC2dTree) was created making it easy to process the data
visually.
Tree tomography
EIT on trees has been successfully established to investigate decay of trees. The example in
dcfemlib/examples/circle/tree was measured and friendly provided by Niels Hoffmann, HAWK
Gottingen. It represents a lime tree, measured by 24 steel electrodes that are plugged into the
bark. Dipole-dipole measurements have been applied using a Geotom equipment.
The configuration file reads as follows
DATAFILE=hollow_limetree.ohm
DIMENSION=2
TOPOGRAPHY=1
# activates the primary mesh
CYLINDER=1
# defines a closed geometry
SURFACESMOOTH=1
# makes a nicer surface
EQUIDISTBOUNDARY=1 # equidistant refinement
PARADX=0.2
# 5 segments between the electrodes
PARA2DQUALITY=34.8 # very good quality, almost the upper limit
SPLINEBOUNDARY=1
# round geometry
PRIMDX_R=0.001
# refinement of primary mesh in radial direction
LAMBDA=10
# regularisation strength
BLOCKYMODEL=1
# enhance contrasts by robust (L1) methods
For this case an equidistant refinement, the use of splines and a high quality ensures a nice
mesh with a round boundary. The primary refinement is done in radial direction. Additionally
we used the robust modelling in order to obtain a clearer contrast of the high resistivity.
0.2

0.1

x/m

0.2

0.2

0.1

x/m

0.2

0.2

0.2

z/m

0.1

0.05

0.05

0.1

0.15

0.2

0.25

126

158

200

251

316

398

Figure 13: Tree cut (left), inversion result (center) and overlay.
After the measurements the tree was cut and revealed a cavity inside caused by decay. Figure 13
shows a photograph, the inversion result and an overlay of both. Clearly the cavity is marked
by high resistivity that is in almost perfect accordance with the photo.

16

4.2. 3d closed geometry - model tanks

In the Federal Institute of Geology and Natural Resources (BGR) Hannover, a cylindrical
model tank was created in order to make infiltration experiments with material from the slag
dump. The column has diameter of 30cm and a height of 80cm. In each of 5 rings with 5 cm
vertical distance 24 steel electrodes of 2cm length were installed. Dipole-dipole measurements
have been applied to all rings yielding a number of 320 data. The example is located in
dcfemlib/examples/inversion/3dtank.
Since the parameterization cannot be detected automatically from the file, we have to create
the mesh input, i.e. the PLC in mesh/mesh.poly by hand using a script. There is a poly tool
polyCreateCube creating a unit cube. With the option -Z is creates a unit cylinder instead,
which has to be scaled appropriately. Then we put in the electrodes as points14 with the
marker -99. We insert two additional nodes with markers -999 and -1000 that are used for
current reference and potential reference. So the script reads:
MESH=mesh/mesh # PLC name
polyCreateCube -v -Z -s 48 -m 2 $MESH # create unit cylinder with 48 segments
polyTranslate -z -0.5 $MESH
# moves it such that top is zero
polyScale -x 0.3 -y 0.3 -z 0.8 $MESH # scale to radius 0.15 & height 0.8
cat soil_column.dat | head -n 82 |tail -n 80 > elec.xyz # extract electrodes
polyAddVIP -m -99 -f elec.xyz $MESH
# add electrodes to mesh
polyAddVIP -m -999 -x 0 -y 0 -z 0 $MESH # current reference node
polyAddVIP -m -1000 -x 0 -y 0 -z -0.8 $MESH # potential reference node
polyConvert -V -o $MESH-poly $MESH
# convert to vtk to load it to paraview
We create an empty cfg file (or use invertNew3dCyl) with the lines
DATAFILE=soil_column.dat
DIMENSION=3
TOPOGRAPHY=1
CYLINDER=1
# ensures the closed geometry
We add our PLC script to the PARAGEOMETRY variable such that mesh/mesh.poly will be
created by it.
PARAGEOMETRY=mymesh.sh # make sure that mymesh.sh is executable
A further refinement can be achieved by quality improvement (PARAQUALITY), local refinement
(PARADX) or maximum cell size (PARAMAXCELLSIZE). In order to obtain an accurate we use a
refinement for the primary mesh of 1cm and quadratic shape functions ending in about 32000
nodes.
PRIMDX=0.01
PRIMP2MESH=1
Figure 14 shows the course from the mesh input via the parameter mesh to the final result.

14

Since the electrodes cannot be show a significant extension compared to the column size, we put the points
not onto the surface but moved it 1cm inside.

17

Figure 14: PLC (left), parameter mesh (center) and inversion result (right) of the soil column
experiment.

18

5. Buried electrodes
5.1. 2D cross-hole data
Of course cross-hole measurements can also be inverted using BERT. The height of each electrode must be set to the elevation minus depth. However, since we cannot distinguish whether
it is topography or a buried electrode we must create the geometry by hand. Note, that for this
reason we introduced the tokens h (height) and d (depth below surface) to the data format,
but this is only recognized by GIMLi.
The example in dcfemlib/examples/inversion/2dxh was produced by O. Kuras of the British
Geological Survey (BGS) in the ALERT project (Kuras et al. (2009)). It represents about
1300 data obtained by cross-hole measurement between 5 very shallow (0-1.6m) boreholes. In
order to create an inversion mesh we would create a small box with marker 2 (inversion) inside
of a big box that is used for forward calculation (marker 1) by 8 points and 8 edges.
This is more rigorously implemented by the script polyFlatWorld which automatically calculates
the size of the model and the boundary around the electrodes from the parameters BOUNDARY,
PARABOUNDARY and PARADEPTH. To pass the variables we use the Unix command source and
introduce PARAGEOMETRY="source polyFlatPara 2dxh.ohm into the cfg file. Additionally
we set SPACECONFIG=2 for subsurface sources and a pretty good quality for the parameter
mesh PARA2DQUALITY=34.5. As before, we can use PARADX to refine the model at the electrodes. In this case we introduce a node between each of the 0.1m separated electrodes using
PARADX=0.05. Note that, different from 2d surface measurements, it is treated by polyFlatWorld as an absolute value. We use a relatively large regularization parameter LAMBDA=300 for
suppressing oscillations at the electrodes. Figure 15 shows the obtained resistivity distribution
at the very beginning of a tracer experiment. See section 6.1 for time-lapse inversion.
0

2.5

3.5

4.5

x/m

5.5

z/m

1.5

10

12.6

15.8

20

25.1

31.6

39.8

50.1

63.1

79.4

100

Figure 15: Inversion result of the crosshole data set.

5.2. 3D-Crosshole measurements

Crosshole measurements can of course be applied three-dimensionally. The example in dcfemlib/examples/inversion/3dxh was presented by J. Doetsch from ETH Zurich. The data file
3dhx.ohm comprises 753 data between 4 boreholes in the saturated zone (d=4-10m) and is
part of a monitoring experiment. We create a cfg file using
DATAFILE=3dxh.ohm
DIMENSION=3

19

SPACECONFIG=2
# for mirror sources at z=0
PARABOUNDARY=15
# to get a bit more space around the electrodes
PARAGEOMETRY="source polyFlatWorld $DATAFILE"
By using ZPOWER=0.3 we can enhance the predominantly layered structures. The inversion
converges then with defaults down to about 2 = 1. Figure 16 shows the final result.

Figure 16: Inversion result for the 3D crosshole case.

5.3. Topography and buried electrodes

If both heights and depths below surface are given, we cannot use createSurface/createParaMesh
and polyFlatWorld. In this case we suggest to create a data file with the surface electrodes
(either with topo or with zeros and a topo file) and a list of subsurface electrodes including
real. The normal PLC generation is done with the first and the latter are then added using polyAddVIP. Importantly the order of electrodes must be set such that first the surface
electrodes and then the buries electrodes appear. The resulting script is introduced using
PARAGEOMETRY=myscript.sh which can look as follows:
cp inv.cfg surface.cfg
# makes a copy with all options
echo DATAFILE=datafile-without-electrodes.dat >> surface.cfg
invert surface.cfg domain
# creates mesh/mesh.poly
polyAddVIP -m -99 -f borehole-electrodes.xyz mesh/mesh.poly
Finally all electrodes are in the PLC in the right order and all should be well.

6. Time-lapse ERT
We are often interested in ongoing physical processes and use ERT for monitoring experiments.
There are many different time-lapse inversion approaches. Here we use a very simple one that
solves the linear subsystem for the resistivity ratio of two data sets after the inversion. An
arbitrary number of subsequent data sets can be processed by writing their file names in a
text file and pass it by TIMESTEPS=filename. Up to now, the data files must contain identical
configurations in the same order.

20

6.1. Crosshole timelapse measurements

Lets go back to the crosshole case 2dxh (see section 5.1) and unpack the time data files in
2dxh-timelapse.zip. In 2006 the BGS injected a highly saline tracer in borehole number 8 and
measured 36 data sets every 40 minutes such that a whole day was covered. The subsequent
files are named 01.dat, 02.dat, ... and are assembled in timesteps.txt.
By including TIMESTEPS=timesteps.txt and calling invert inv.cfg calc again. As a result we
obtain a lot of model i res.vector containing the resistivity values for one time step each. By
a show command they are transferred into paraview files ParaView recognizes this names as
time steps and allows an easy scrolling through the times. Figure 17 shows some selected time
steps that allow for seeing the tracer flow toward the left boundary. Note that these are only
preliminary results that are used to present how BERT is working. With more sophisticated
time lapse strategies the monitoring process can be traced more accurately.
0

2.5

3.5

4.5

x/m

5.5

z/m

z/m

1.5

1.5

10
0

12.6
2

15.8

20

2.5

25.1
3

31.6
3.5

39.8
4

50.1
4.5

63.1

79.4

x/m

100

10

5.5

z/m

z/m

1.5

1.5

10

12.6

15.8

20

25.1

31.6

39.8

50.1

63.1

79.4

100

10

12.6
2

12.6

2.5

15.8

20

2.5

15.8

3.5

25.1
3

20

31.6
3.5

25.1

31.6

39.8
4

39.8

4.5

50.1
4.5

50.1

x/m

63.1

5.5

79.4

x/m

63.1

100
5.5

79.4

100

Figure 17: Inversion results 3 hours (upper left), 7 hours (upper right), 12 hours (lower left)
and 16.5 hours (lower right) after tracer injection.

6.2. Soil column measurements

We go back to the soil column example from section 4.2. After irrigating a certain amount
of water, every 2 hours a complete data set was measured and included in the TIMESERIES
file. Since the changes are relatively low, we take a look at the relative differences in the files
diff i.vtk with respect to the initial resistivity. Figure 18 shows 5 selected time steps. We can
see the water front intruding but at a certain stage the column is drying out again.

21

Figure 18: Relative resistivity difference (in %) for the repeated measurements at about 2, 4,
6, 10 and 16 hours after irrigation.

7. Concluding remarks and outlook

We hope to having demonstrated that our software can be used for ERT inversion on very
different geometries using different kinds of data. BERT is not a black-box dummy tool and
probably it will never be. Thus a lot of experience is required to obtain excellent results.
However, for special cases it is worth to branch out more user-friendly tools with immediate
visualization and data analysis. We started this by TreeBERT, CylBERT and WallBERT.
There are some disadvantages in the use of BERT that are due to the historic development.
BERT as part of DCFEMLib will mainly stay the way it is now, only bugs are fixed and minor
issues are addressed. However, the technique BERT is included among other methods in the
library GIMLi for geophysical inversion and modelling. The new and independent multi-physics
library has some advances over DCFEMLib
A much more flexible style of programming using template techniques.
Connection of different data by classical or structural joint inversion.
Use of arbitrary transform functions.
More rigorous techniques for time-lapse inversion.
Application of a region technique for sophisticated constraints.
See also appendix D for BERT within the scope of GIMLi.

Acknowledgements
We like to thank all the guys that provided the very instructive data: Folker Donner (formerly
University of Mining and Technology, Freiberg), Markus Furche and Ulla Noell (BGR Hannover), Thomas Schicht (K-UTec GmbH Sondershausen), Niels Hoffmann (formerly HAWK
Gottingen), Oliver Kuras (British Geological Survey), Joseph Doetsch and Ilaria Coscia (ETH
Zurich). Furthermore we acknowledge all the users and testers of BERT that made the software
what it is now, a powerful expert tool.

22

References
G
unther, T. (2002-2007). DC2dInvRes - Direct Current 2d Inversion and Resolution. resistivity.net productions, http://dc2dinvres.resistivity.net.
G
unther, T. (2003-2008). DC3dInvRes - Direct Current 3d Inversion and Resolution. resistivity.net productions, http://dc3dinvres.resistivity.net.
G
unther, T. and R
ucker, C. (2006). A general approach for introducing structural information
- from constraints to joint inversion. In Ext. Abstract, EAGE Near Surface Geophysics
Workshop. 3.-6.9.06, Helsinki(Finland).
G
unther, T., R
ucker, C., and Spitzer, K. (2006). 3-d modeling and inversion of dc resistivity
data incorporating topography - part II: Inversion. Geophys. J. Int., 166(2):506517.
Kuras, O., Pritchard, J., Meldrum, P. I., Chambers, J. E., Wilkinson, P. B., Ogilvy, R. D.,
and Wealthall, G. P. (2009). Monitoring hydraulic processes with automated time-lapse
electrical resistivity tomography (ALERT). Compte Rendus Geosciences - Special issue on
Hydrogeophysics, 341(10-11):868885.
R
ucker, C., G
unther, T., and Spitzer, K. (2006). 3-d modeling and inversion of dc resistivity
data incorporating topography - part I: Modeling. Geophys. J. Int., 166(2):495505.
Shewchuk, J. R. (1996). Triangle: Engineering a 2D Quality Mesh Generator and Delaunay
Triangulator. In Lin, M. C. and Manocha, D., editors, Applied Computational Geometry:
Towards Geometric Engineering, volume 1148 of Lecture Notes in Computer Science, pages
203222. Springer-Verlag. From the First ACM Workshop on Applied Computational Geometry.
Si, H. (2002-2008). TetGen - a quality-constrained tetrahedral mesh generator. Weierstrass
institute, Berlin, http://tetgen.berlios.de.

A. BERT for Windows users

BERT is successfully applied on Windows platforms, however it can be slower for bigger problems. Most easily it is distributed under the name BERT4WIN-Suite comprising the binaries
from dcfemlib. Additionally it holds dcmod and dcinv and the gimli library (see Appendix D).
Since BERT is controlled on the command line, Windows users need a command environment as well such as the widely known Cygwin. We recommend MSYS (minimal system), a
very small but nice bash-like command shell.Download the current MinGW installer (mingwget*.exe) from http://www.mingw.org and install it. Install BERT4WIN, assuming under
d:\software\BERT15 . Then this path must be known inside the shell, either by changing the
environment variable Path under System Control - System - Environment Variables or in the
shell by typing
$ export PATH=$PATH:/d/software/BERT
The latter can also be done automatically at startup by insertion into a .bashrc file in the
home directory.
15

Although it should work from version 1.2.5 on, we recommend to use pathnames without blank for both
installation and working files.

23

Note that file names are in different from Windows, i.e. /c instead of c:, slash instead of
backslash and names are case-sensitive. Under Windows Vista and 7, please use the original
(English) names as /c/Users instead of the translated ones visible in the explorer. If you
prepared your data and configuration file in a directory, you should go there with the shell by
i.e.
$ cd /c/data/profile1/trial and run the inversion using invert inv.cfg all and so on.

B. Files and programs

Created files and their meaning
File types:
*.poly
*.bms
*.vtk
*.mesh
*.vector
*.collect

triangle (2d) or tetgen (3d) PLC format

binary mesh (house) format
visual toolkit mesh or poly format (paraview)
MEdit mesh format
ascii vector of floats
potential matrix of all electrodes

Directories and their content:

mesh
primaryPot/primary
primaryPot/interpolated
sensM
result*

meshes and mesh input (meshPara,meshSec,meshPrim)

primary potentials on primary mesh
primary potentials on secondary mesh
sensitivity columns (smatrix.*) or rows smatrixCol.*
saved result directory with most important files

Files in project or result directory:

command.history
*.data
inv.log
model iter.final
model iter.*.vector
modelResponse.*.vector
modelReciprocity.*.vector
sensCov.vector
mesh/mesh.poly
mesh/meshParaDomain

history of commands executed by invert

filtered data file with apparent resistivities and errors
inversion log file
final resistivity distribution
model vectors of individual iterations
model response vectors for each iteration
model response reciprocity for each iteration
coverage (sum of absolute sensitivies)
mesh input PLC
pure parameter mesh (use for visualization)

Program calls used for BERT

Inversion and parameterization:
invert - BERT cfg file interpretation
invertNew2d/2dTopo/2dCirc - CFG file generators for 2d cases (flat,topo,circle)
invertNew3d/3dTopo/2dCyl - CFG file generators for 3d cases (flat,topo,tank)
inversion - actual inversion routine
paradepth - estimate appropriate model depth by 1D sensitivities

24

dcfem - FEM modelling routine

setsingvalue - set potentials at electrodes
collectdata - assemble potentials from dcfem
filterdata - filter data yielding apparent resistivity and error estimate
Vector functions:
createStartModel
va2b
va2b
interpolate

create starting model vector

convert ascii to binary vector
convert binary to ascii vector
interpolate quantity from one mesh to another

Mesh creation and alteration:

createParaMesh
createSecondaryMesh
createSurface
closeSurface
prepareMeshRefinement
dctriangle
meshconvert

create parameter mesh from dat file

create secondary mesh out of parameters
create 3d surface mesh from xyz point list
close 3d surface mesh by surrounding boxes
insert refinemeht points
triangle call
convert mesh between various import formats

Poly tools - creating PLC objects:

polyCreateWorld
polyFlatWorld
polyCreateCube
polyTranslate
polyScale
polyRotate
polyMerge
polyAddVIP
polyAddProfile
polyRefineVIPS
polyConvert
polyScripts.sh

makes a world with 2 surface and interior boundary

make inversion world (2 regions) around electrodes
create (unit) cube around origin
translate PLC
scale PLC
rotate PLC
merge 2 PLCs into a new one
add points (e.g. electrodes) to PLC
add profile of electrodes
refine points by local refinement
convert PLC to VTK or STL format
various functions

C. Complete list of options and their default values

# Global settings
DATAFILE=datafile
DIMENSION=3
TOPOGRAPHY=0
TOPOPOINTS=
TOPOPOLY=
TIMESTEPS=
PARAGEOMETRY=
INTERFACE=

#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#

defines the project filename (required)

defines the dimension of the problem (2 for 2d or 3 for 3d)
defines if topography is present (0 or 1)
file with additional coordinates for topography (x y z)
file with additional polygons for topography (x0 y0 z0)
file with names of additional datafiles for timelapse inversion
defines command for creating the PLC by hand
file with known interface(s) (currently only 2d)

25

CYLINDER=0
ELECTRODENODES=1
SPACECONFIG=0
UNDERWATER=0

#
#
#
#

defines cylindrical geometry (0 or 1)

electrodes are represented as nodes (default)
geometric factor (0=half space, 1=full space, 2=mirror source)
defines underwater survey, sets SPACECONFIG=2

# Data settings
INPUTOHM=0
# input data is in Ohm
OVERRIDEERROR=0
# overrides given errors with INPUTERRLEVEL/INPUTERRVOLTAGE
INPUTERRLEVEL=3
# sets input error level (in percent) if no error given
INPUTERRVOLTAGE=100e-6 # sets input voltage error (V) if no error given
FILTERVALS=0
# defines filter values (experimental)
# Inversion settings
RHOSTART=0
# resistivity of start model (0 = median of the data)
NOPROLONGATION=0 # disables resistivity prolongation into non-inversion regions
MAXITER=20
# maximum number of iteration steps
SINGVALUE=-1
# potential value at electrodes, for sensitivity (internal)
LAMBDA=20
# regularization parameter
LAMBDAOPT=0
# optimze lambda by using l-curve (0 or 1)
LAMBDADECREASE=1 # decrease lambda with each iteration
CONSTRAINT=1
# order 0, 1, 2 (experimental)
ZPOWER=0
# weight for vertical gradients
BLOCKYMODEL=0
# iteratively reweighted model (L1)
ROBUSTDATA=0
# iteratively reweighted data (L1)
LOWERBOUND=0.0
# lower resistivity bound (logarithmic barrier)
UPPERBOUND=0.0
# upper resistivity bound (0.0 = deactivated)
SENSMATUPDATE=0
# update sensitivity matrix with each iteration step
SENSMATDROPTOL=0 # only for very large problems (internal)
SENSMATMAXMEM=800 # only for very large problems (internal)
# Mesh settings
PARAMAXCELLSIZE=0 # maximum cell size volume (m3) or area (m2) for para mesh
PRIMMAXCELLSIZE=0 # maximum cell size volume (m3) or area (m2) for prim mesh
PARADEPTH=0
# maximum depth of parameter domain in meter (0 = automatic)
PARABOUNDARY=5
# boundary around electrodes in parameter domain (percent)
SPLINEBOUNDARY=0 # use splines for additional surface points
EQUIDISTBOUNDARY=0# equidistant refined space between electrodes
BOUNDARY=500
# size of boundary area around parameter domain
MESHGEN=tetgen
# 3d mesh generator
TETGENTOLERANCE=1e-12
# tetgen tolerance limit for face checks
TETGENPRESERVEBOUNDARY=0 # prevents tetgen from splitting boundary facets
PARADX=0.0
# refinement for para mesh (values>0.5 is forced to 0.5)
PRIMDX=0.1
# ref. for prim mesh towards mesh center(2d: electrode)
PRIMDX_R=0.0
# ref. for prim mesh towards electr. center (overrides PRIMDX)
PARA2DQUALITY=33.0# parameter grid (from 20 (bad) to 33.4 (good))
PRIM2DQUALITY=33.4# primary grid (from 20 (bad) to 33.4 (good))
PARA3DQUALITY=1.5 # parameter grid (from 1.1 (good) to 2 (bad))

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PRIM3DQUALITY=1.2 # primary grid (from 1.1 (good) to 2 (bad))

SURFACEQUALITY=30 # quality of topographical surface grid (20 (bad) - 33.4 (good))
SURFACEMAXTRISIZE=0.0 # maximal triangle area of paramatric surface grid
SURFACESMOOTH=0
# improve quality of topographical surface grid
ICDROPTOL=0.0
# if number of nodes 200k drop tolerance is set for ICCG solver
LINSOLVER=1
# linear solver: 1=CHOLMOD, 2=LDL, 3=PCG (very slow), 4=TAUCS
SECMESHREFINE=1
# refinement steps for secondary mesh (use with caution)
SECP2MESH=0
# quadratic shapefunction for secmesh (experimental)
PRIMP2MESH=0
# use primary p2 mesh (use with caution)
# Directory settings
MESHBASENAME=mesh # basename for mesh files
DIRMESHS=mesh
# directory name for mesh files
DIRPOT=primaryPot # directory name for primary and interpolated potentials
DIRPRIMPOT=potentials
# subdirectory name for primary potentials
DIRINTERPOLPOT=interpolated # subdirectory name for interpolated potentials
DIRFEM=femM
# directory name for finite element solutions
DIRSENS=sensM
# directory name for sensitivity matrix
OLDPRIMMESHSTYLE=0# for internal use only

D. BERT version 2 using GIMLi

DCFEMLib as a library for dc resistivity modelling and inversion is not extended anymore.
Only a few improvements and bug fixes will keep it updated as standard tool. However, the
BERT technology is further developed within the open source library GIMLi - Geophysical
Inversion and Modelling Library. It represents a completely new-written multi-method C++
class library for inversion of very different data. So BERT as a technology consisting of mesh
generation, primary potential calculation and finally inversion, still persists. GIMLi::BERT
has some advantages over DCFEMLib::BERT:
mix of electrode nodes, node-free or finite electrodes
faster runtime and easier build procedure
more rigorous minimization approach, mainly time-lapse
better support for induced polarization data
improved options such as arbitrary transformations
region technique for sophisticated regularization
options for data filtering and restructuring
python bindings for in-place data and model visualization
solutions for specific users
There are no mesh generation procedures in GIMLi, so before v.2.1 we will still use the invert
poly and mesh functions. Main difference is to replace invert by bert and analogously

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bertNew* etc. The changes are documented in the migration guide that can be retrieved from
the authors as well as the current (beta) version.

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