Man-made Earthquakes and the Energy Transition

Earthquakes occur when faults slip. While the most devastating earthquakes are of tectonic origin, human activities have been associated with the triggering of earthquakes that have caused substantial economic damage and societal concern. The demonstration that fluid injection can cause earthquakes dates back to the 1970s (Raleigh et al., Science 1976), but critical gaps remain in our ability to understand and, more importantly, mitigate, the occurrence of induced earthquakes. Here I will discuss some of our recent work employing contrasting approaches to help fill these gaps: from minimal-ingredients spring-slider models that account for poroelasticity (Alghannam and Juanes, Nature Comm. 2020) to sophisticated multiphysics computational models that integrate disparate datasets and have succeeded at setting management strategies that prevent earthquakes while allowing subsurface operations in a tectonically active field (Hager et al., Nature 2021).

Speaker: Ruben Juanes, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Room 350/372