Asian Journal of Geological Research

Conventional root-mean-square amplitude is widely used to represent local seismic reflection energy, but its quadratic dependence on amplitude makes it susceptible to impulsive spikes, amplitude extremes, and spatial broadening of high-energy responses. This study develops and evaluates three interpretable RMS-related seismic attributes that introduce robustness at different stages of local energy estimation: Modulated RMS, Despike-aware Modulated RMS, and a Weighted Hybrid estimator. The Modulated RMS attribute preserves conventional RMS as its baseline while applying a bounded central–surround energy-contrast correction. The Despike-aware formulation applies median- and median-absolute-deviation-based amplitude control before evaluating the same modulation. The Weighted Hybrid estimator combines Huber-weighted quadratic energy with a Huber-weighted logarithmic amplitude measure through an adjustable blending coefficient. The novelty lies not in the individual use of RMS, Huber weighting, median-based statistics, or logarithmic averaging, but in their specific integration into complementary seismic-attribute formulations with distinct operational purposes. The methods are evaluated against conventional RMS using two synthetic datasets with clean reference sections and six field seismic datasets representing different structural and noise conditions. The results demonstrate condition-dependent behaviour: Modulated RMS provides conservative local enhancement, the despike-aware formulation is most relevant to impulsive contamination, and the Weighted Hybrid estimator provides stronger control of amplitude extremes and background responses. No method is universally superior across all datasets and evaluation criteria. The proposed framework therefore provides a set of complementary attribute options for reflector enhancement, spike suppression, and structurally informed seismic interpretation.