Earthquakes in Groningen: Organized Suppression of a Creeping Crisis

Verdoes, Alexander; Boin, Arjen

doi:10.1007/978-3-030-70692-0_9

Cited by 4 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 7 publications

(8 reference statements)

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…According to reference [3], "usually natural earthquakes do not occur in the northern part of the Netherlands. Yet, small earthquakes have frequently affected the area since the 1980s.…”

Section: Groningen/the Netherlands 1) Earthquakesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Wisdom and Geology, the North German Basin, and the Significance of Thrown Dices

Brink¹

2023

IJG

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

For thousands of years, mankind is observing the surrounding nature. Often, they found no obvious clues for inexplicable and complex facts, leading to the belief that their wisdom was limited. This is in the majority of cases still true today, but based on hundreds of years of (geo-) scientific work some older thoughts can now be readjusted by combining newer geological, environmental, historical and philosophical clues. Facts about the development of the North German Basin are used to demonstrate the variability of geological systems and how these can be described by taking dice as a metaphor for ruling geological parameters. This includes all kinds of plate tectonically controlled basin forming processes, especially metamorphism of the lower crust due to a fixed mantle plume, basin filling processes with their galactic and lunar overprints, basin modifying tectonics due to internal (halokinesis, inversion) or external forces (one-sided loads at the surface due to mighty Delta sediments or glacial ice sheets) and geochemical reactions as a result of pressure and temperature changes in course of subsidence. Especially, the Rotliegend (Lower Permian) Gas Play is one of the possible illustrations of the entity of the North German Basin with its more than 70 -90 independent parameters belonging to a global set of very complex hydrocarbon systems. Processes on Earth like the formation of systems of hydrocarbon fields as well as environmental systems (e.g. river systems, lakes, islands, sedimentary basins) are subordinated to the dices of nature and are steered invisibly by a selection of rules of the game that one understands as natural laws. The facts and remaining uncertainties as well as problems with subsurface-related processes (e.g. manmade tectonics, subsidence and uplift) guide the thoughts of engaged individuals on how to proceed wisely with limited predictability of challenges and dangers of a subsurface system. This work will be a trial to associate once more the natural sciences (geology) and the humanities (philosophy) for the benefit of both.

show abstract

“…According to reference [3], "usually natural earthquakes do not occur in the northern part of the Netherlands. Yet, small earthquakes have frequently affected the area since the 1980s.…”

Section: Groningen/the Netherlands 1) Earthquakesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Wisdom and Geology, the North German Basin, and the Significance of Thrown Dices

Brink¹

2023

IJG

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Since production began in 1963, more than 2115 billion m 3 of natural gas has been produced from the field (van Thienen-Visser and Breunese, 2015). Due to this gas production, the reservoir layer has compacted over time, causing earthquakes that have in some cases caused damage to buildings in the Groningen province (Van Eck et al, 2006) and led to several protests against further gas extraction in the area (Verdoes and Boin, 2021). To investigate these earthquakes, an extensive seismometer array was installed, which is operated by the KNMI (the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute) on behalf of Nederlandse Aardolie Maatschappij (NAM) (Ntinalexis et al, 2019).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

An efficient probabilistic workflow for estimating induced earthquake parameters in 3D heterogeneous media

Masfara

Cullison²,

Weemstra³

2022

Solid Earth

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Abstract. We present an efficient probabilistic workflow for the estimation of source parameters of induced seismic events in three-dimensional heterogeneous media. Our workflow exploits a linearized variant of the Hamiltonian Monte Carlo (HMC) algorithm. Compared to traditional Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) algorithms, HMC is highly efficient in sampling high-dimensional model spaces. Through a linearization of the forward problem around the prior mean (i.e., the “best” initial model), this efficiency can be further improved. We show, however, that this linearization leads to a performance in which the output of an HMC chain strongly depends on the quality of the prior, in particular because not all (induced) earthquake model parameters have a linear relationship with the recordings observed at the surface. To mitigate the importance of an accurate prior, we integrate the linearized HMC scheme into a workflow that (i) allows for a weak prior through linearization around various (initial) centroid locations, (ii) is able to converge to the mode containing the model with the (global) minimum misfit by means of an iterative HMC approach, and (iii) uses variance reduction as a criterion to include the output of individual Markov chains in the estimation of the posterior probability. Using a three-dimensional heterogeneous subsurface model of the Groningen gas field, we simulate an induced earthquake to test our workflow. We then demonstrate the virtue of our workflow by estimating the event's centroid (three parameters), moment tensor (six parameters), and the earthquake's origin time. Using the synthetic case, we find that our proposed workflow is able to recover the posterior probability of these source parameters rather well, even when the prior model information is inaccurate, imprecise, or both inaccurate and imprecise.

show abstract

“…Since production began in 1963, more than 2115 billion cubic meters of natural gas have been produced from the field (van Thienen-Visser and Breunese, 2015). Due to this gas production, the reservoir layer has compacted over time, causing earthquakes that have in some cases caused damage to buildings in the Groningen province (Van Eck et al, 2006) and led to several protests against further gas extraction in the area (Verdoes and Boin, 2021). To investigate these earthquakes, an extensive seismometer array was installed, which is operated by the KNMI (The Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute) on behalf of Nederlandse Aardolie Maatschappij (NAM) (Ntinalexis et al, 2019).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Efficient probabilistic inversion for induced earthquake parameters in 3D heterogeneous media

Masfara

Cullison

Weemstra

2022

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Abstract. We present an efficient probabilistic workflow for the estimation of source parameters of induced seismic events in three-dimensional heterogeneous media. Our workflow exploits a linearized variant of the Hamiltonian Monte Carlo (HMC) algorithm. Compared to traditional Markov-Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) algorithms, HMC is highly efficient in sampling high-dimensional model spaces. Through a linearization of the forward problem around the prior mean (i.e., the "best" initial model), this efficiency can be further improved. We show, however, that this linearization leads to a performance in which the output of an HMC chain strongly depends on the quality of the prior; in particular, because not all (induced) earthquake model parameters have a linear relationship with the recordings observed at the surface. To mitigate the importance of an accurate prior, we integrate the linearized HMC scheme into a workflow that (i) allows for a weak prior through linearization around various (initial) centroid locations, (ii) is able to converge to the mode containing the model with the (global) minimum misfit by means of an iterative HMC approach, and (iii) uses variance reduction as a criterion to include the output of individual Markov chains in the estimation of the posterior probability. Using a three-dimensional heterogeneous subsurface model of the Groningen gas field, we simulate an induced earthquake to test our workflow. We then demonstrate the virtue of our workflow by estimating the event's centroid (three parameters), moment tensor (six parameters), and the earthquake's origin time. We find that our workflow is able to recover the posterior probability of these source parameters rather well, even when the prior model information is inaccurate, imprecise, or both inaccurate and imprecise.

show abstract

Earthquakes in Groningen: Organized Suppression of a Creeping Crisis

Cited by 4 publications

References 7 publications

Wisdom and Geology, the North German Basin, and the Significance of Thrown Dices

Wisdom and Geology, the North German Basin, and the Significance of Thrown Dices

An efficient probabilistic workflow for estimating induced earthquake parameters in 3D heterogeneous media

Efficient probabilistic inversion for induced earthquake parameters in 3D heterogeneous media

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About