Forward induced seismic hazard assessment: application to a synthetic seismicity catalogue from hydraulic stimulation modelling

The Mw 3.2-induced seismic event in 2006 due to fluid injection at the Basel geothermal site in Switzerland was the starting point for an ongoing discussion in Europe on the potential risk of hydraulic stimulation in general. In particular, further development of mitigation strategies of induced seismic events of economic concern became a hot topic in geosciences and geoengineering. Here, we present a workflow to assess the hazard of induced seismicity in terms of occurrence rate of induced seismic events. The workflow is called Forward Induced Seismic Hazard Assessment (FISHA) as it combines the results of forward hydromechanical-numerical models with methods of time-dependent probabilistic seismic hazard assessment. To exemplify FISHA, we use simulations of four different fluid injection types with various injection parameters, i.e. injection rate, duration and style of injection. The hydromechanical-numerical model applied in this study represents a geothermal reservoir with preexisting fractures where a routine of viscous fluid flow in porous media is implemented from which flow and pressure driven failures of rock matrix and preexisting fractures are simulated, and corresponding seismic moment magnitudes are computed. The resulting synthetic catalogues of induced seismicity, including event location, occurrence time and magnitude, are used to calibrate the magnitude completeness Mc and the parameters a and b of the frequency-magnitude relation. These are used to estimate the time-dependent occurrence rate of induced seismic events for each fluid injection scenario. In contrast to other mitigation strategies that rely on real-time data or already obtained catalogues, we can perform various synthetic experiments with the same initial conditions. Thus, the advantage of FISHA is that it can quantify hazard from numerical experiments and recommend a priori a stimulation type that lowers the occurrence rate of induced seismic events. The FISHA workflow is rather general and not limited to the hydromechanical-numerical model used in this study and can therefore be applied to other fluid injection models.