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Annual Seismic Hazard and Risk Forecasting for the Groningen Gas Field: Public Domain SHRA by the Geological Survey of the Netherlands

Description: 

The Groningen gas field (Europe’s largest gas field) is being shut down in the near future due to ongoing societal concerns about the seismicity that has been induced by the gas production. Current gas production levels are at ~5% of the historical peak and are fully determined by the Dutch government based on security of supply. The Geological Survey of the Netherlands has been tasked with providing an annual update of the public Seismic Hazard and Risk Analysis (pSHRA), based on the forecasted production strategy for the envisioned end-of-production and beyond. This pSHRA includes a spatiotemporally varying seismicity rate model and associated magnitude distribution, hazard calculations based on location-specific Ground Motion Model (GMM) with a high-resolution site-response model, and a Local Personal Risk calculation for the 150,000+ buildings in the area. These calculations include a logic tree that currently has 1008 unique paths and will likely expand to 9072 unique paths for the upcoming pSHRA calculation due to the introduction of a new GMM. The (anonymized) results of the annual pSHRA are published and are legally required to be considered in determining the gas production levels. To ensure complete traceability and reproducibility of the pSHRA results, every run of the software is stored and backed up including all input files, configuration settings, and a reference to the version control system of the source code.
In this presentation, we discuss the role of a Geological Survey in such a societally debated context and share lessons learned about different facets of public SHRA, ranging from QA/QC and software design to the importance of (national) safety norms and an integrated model view in a modular chain of models. Finally, we look ahead, both to the Groningen case and to applications beyond, such as Geothermal and CCS.

Session: Understanding and Managing Induced Seismicity

Type: Oral

Date: 4/19/2023

Presentation Time: 08:15 AM (local time)

Presenting Author: Sander Osinga

Student Presenter: No

Invited Presentation: 

Authors