The technological response to increasing needs for energy and minerals results also in appearance of induced seismicity in previously aseismic areas;
Strong seismic events caused by human technological activity are dangerous for people, technical devices, and infrastructure objects;
The problems of estimation, prediction and mitigation of the hazards implied by induced seismicity have not found satisfactory solutions;
The present unsatisfactory level of understanding of the hazards implied by induced seismicity results partially from insufficient integration of research groups in the field,
we propose to initiate TEAMWORK FOR HAZARD ESTIMATION FOR TRIGGERED AND INDUCED SEISMICITY (THETAIS). THETAIS will be a virtual centre team to study all aspects of the seismic hazard due to triggered and induced seismicity. Presently, research groups dealing with induced seismicity are organized around technological processes that originate the seismicity. THETAIS initiative is intended to group scientists and industrial representatives in virtual research centers defined by specific scientific problems, which are common regardless the processes that cause seismicity. Cooperation within the teamwork will be supported by modern IT.
Some details describing THETAIS initiative are presented in the attached document.
The first open meeting of TEAMWORK FOR HAZARD ESTIMATION FOR TRIGGERED AND INDUCED SEISMICITY will take place during the ESC General Assembly A in Montpellier on Thursday, Sept. 9th at 12:00 (room Barthez, level 2). All interested are welcomed.
Please have a look into the email I (and possibly many of you) received today. I encourage you to undersign the open letter to the President of the Italian Republic and support our colleagues.
Dear colleagues and friends,
Two weeks ago the L’Aquila Prosecutor’s office indicted of manslaughter the members of the National High Risk Committee that met in L'Aquila one week before the Mw6.3 earthquake. The charges are for failing to provide a short term alarm to the population before the earthquake struck, killing more than 300 people. The president of INGV, Enzo Boschi (member of the High Risk Committee), and the director of the National Earthquake Center, Giulio Selvaggi (just accompanying Boschi to the meeting as technical specialist), are among the scientists in seismology and earthquake engineering now under investigation together with some civil protection officials.
The aim of the ECGS-FKPE Workshop on „Induced Seismicity“ is to bring together leading scientists that work in this field. In contrast to similar workshops on this theme, we want to bring together mainly academic researchers as well as representatives from state geological surveys or state earthquake onitoring agencies. A special volume of the Cahiers du Centre Européen de Géodynamique et de Séismologie will be published with extended abstracts to be printed just before the meeting).
We would like to call your attention to a session ES1, "Triggered and Induced Seismicity" of the ESC2010: European Seismological Commission 32nd General Assembly in Montpellier, France, September 6-10.
The deadline for submission of abstracts is May 31, 2010. For details and to submit an abstract please visit the web page http://www.esc2010.eu/esc2010.
With our best regards
Stan Lasocki Vladimir Rudajev Maxim Nesterenko Conveners of ES1
We'd like to invite you to submit abstracts and attend to the Session 09: Seismicity Induced by Human Technologycal Activity of Joint AGU Assembly 2010: "The Meeting of Americas" FOZ DO IGUACU, Brazil, August 8-13rd, 2010.
Review on Induced Seismicity in Hydrocarbon Fields
Written by Stanislaw Lasocki
Monday, 22 February 2010
Dear All,
I would like to draw your attention to the paper "Induced Seismicity in Hydrocarbon Fields" by Jenny Suckale, which has just been published in Advances in Geophysics (vol. 51 ch. 2, 55-105, 2009). The paper is a very interesting and valuable review of the recent knowledge on this particular induced seismicity phenomenon.
VIII International Workshop “Physics and Forecasting of Rock Destruction”
Written by Grzegorz Kwiatek
Friday, 12 February 2010
VIII International Workshop “Physics and Forecasting of Rock Destruction” will be held on May 24-28, 2010 in the resort Repino located on the shore of the Finnish Gulf, 60 km from St. Petersburg.
[Excerpt from ESC2010 Website:] The EMSC will organize the ESC 32nd General Assembly on behalf of the European Seismological Commission. Our goal is to offer an attractive scientific programme and an enjoyable stay to all our participants. We also aim to improve the dialogue between the public and the scientific world on risk-related issues. We will all gather in Montpellier, a beautifully preserved medieval city near the Mediterranean sea. Gastronomy and history are gathered together to offer you a splendid venue.
As you possbly already noticed, the TAIS websited moved to a new domain. The updated website address is http://tais.iaspei.net. The old address (http://www.tais.agh.edu.pl) is no longer available and all references to this location redirect to the new address.
In the meanwhile, almost all parts of our website works perfectly. However, if you find a bug or problem, please let us know and contact TAIS administrator.
One (still) unresolved issue is the problem with uploading of electronic materials. If you have a slow internet connection, it is likely after 30 seconds you will get an error (timeout). We are working on in.
I would like to draw your attention to induced seismicity-related sessions that will take place during AGU2009 Fall Meeting in San Francision in a few days:
S31E. Observation and Analysis of Natural and Induced Microearthquakes II (chairs: J. Andres Chavarria and Volker Oye)
S32B. Observation and Analysis of Natural and Induced Microearthquakes III (chairs: James T Rutledge and Stefan Buske)
S23B. Observation and Analysis of Natural and Induced Microearthquakes I Posters (Poster session)
5th International Seiminar on Deep and High Stress Mining
Written by Grzegorz Kwiatek
Friday, 25 September 2009
Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, in collaboration with the Australian Centre for Geomechanics, the University of Toronto and the University of Witwatersrand, is pleased to host the 5th International Seiminar on Deep and High Stress Mining, October 6th to 8th 2010, in Santiago, Chile.
As the mining industry is facing new challenges in order to extract the mineral resources at increasing depths, the Deep Mining International Seminar series provide a forum for the industry, academics and researchers to share information, experience and ideas on deep and high stress mining.
Papers are called in the following areas:
Planning and design
Ventilation
Blasting
Risk and safety
Geophysics
Seismicity and seismological analysis
Numerical modelling
Ground support and ground behaviour
Observations and monitoring
Case studies
Intending authors are invited to submit a 500-word abstract by 1 March 2010 to
This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it
. Those abstracts which have been received for the previous seminar date will automatically be included unless the intending authors notify on the contrary. Abstracts are to be submitted as a Word document. They are to provide a general scope of the work, a summary of the results, and the significance of the work and applications. They should also include the title, authors’ affiliation, and the contact author’s address, telephone and fax numbers and email address. All accepted papers will be included in the Deep Mining 09 seminar proceedings. Authors will be notified of abstract acceptance by late March 2010.
Key Dates:
All abstracts received by: 1 March 2010
Acceptance of abstracts and authors notified: 22 March 2010
Dear Members of Triggered and Induced Seismicity (TAIS) Community!
As most of you probably know we had the next successful induced seismicity meeting in IASPEI General Assembly in Cape Town (10-16/01/2009). The all day symposium S4 on Induced Seismicity gathered 21 oral and 10 poster presentations. Out of 21 intended talks 20 were provided, the rate which is close to a world record I guess. The first, morning sessions were dominated by mining induced seismicity issues, the afternoon sessions were devoted to reservoir induced and hydrofracturing associating seismicity affairs. You can find all abstracts from the symposium on our TAIS web page (www.tais.agh.edu.pl).
In the last hour of the session time we had a meeting of the Triggered and Induced Seismicity Working Group with kind participation of all interested in TAIS problems. A short information on ongoing activities of the WG was followed by a discussion on the possible future activities.
As you know the main aim and scope of the TAIS WG is the sharing of experience in the monitoring, analysis and interpretation of induced seismicity events under different geological and technological conditions. Three areas of this aim were addressed during our discussion:
I. TAIS web page
We all agreed that launching of the TAIS WG web page (www.tais.agh.edu.pl) was an important step towards integrating our community and we deeply appreciated the excellent work done by Dr. Grzegorz Kwiatek from GFZ Potsdam, who has created and administers the page.
Authors of oral and poster presentations of the S4 symposium were to be approached individually for their presentations to be uploaded to the TAIS web page.
Presently we already have 13 ppt files on the TAIS page.
In order to further improve an information exchange through the TAIS page it was suggested that we could provide links redirecting the TAIS page to our personal web pages.
Please, contact
This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it
if you wished to have such a link.
II. Publications
We all agreed that launching of the TAIS WG web page (www.tais.agh.edu.pl) was an important step towards integrating our community and we deeply appreciated the excellent work done by Dr. Grzegorz Kwiatek from GFZ Potsdam, who has created and administers the page.
Authors of oral and poster presentations of the S4 symposium were to be approached individually for their presentations to be uploaded to the TAIS web page.
Presently we already have 13 ppt files on the TAIS page.
In order to further improve an information exchange through the TAIS page it was suggested that we could provide links redirecting the TAIS page to our personal web pages.
Please, contact
This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it
if you wished to have such a link.
II. Publications
It was suggested that we should identify a place (journal?, section?) where as much as possible of our papers on triggered and induced seismicity could be published. In this way our publication could be less scattered among different locations as they presently are.
As a follow-up of this suggestion I have set a Special Section on Triggered and Induced Seismicity within Acta Geophysica, the Springer’s journal which I am a chief editor. All papers on TAIS subjects are welcomed to this section.
TAIS WG should initiate works aimed at selecting standard or widely-accepted key-words on triggered and induced seismicity issues. An intent of this undertaking is to simplify search for printed materials on particular subjects of the triggered and induced seismicity.
I hope that Dr. Steve Spottiswoode, who proposed this activity, will give it a first push.
III. Meetings
We all agreed that we should continue with separate induced seismicity sessions in next IASPEI symposia, beginning with a IASPEI symposium at the IUGG 2011 in Melbourne.
I am pleased that this idea has been approved firstly by CoSOI commission where TAIS WG belongs to, and then by IASPEI Executive Committee. We shall have a separate session in Melbourne!
It had been planned to have a separate workshop on triggered and induced seismicity in 2010, however those plans were pushed out by a suggestion to have the TAIS session in the Joint AGU meeting in Brazil in 2010.
A program of the joint meeting will be structured in August this year. I shall let you know what has been decided regarding the induced seismicity session.
Let me recommend you the article that reviews some current ideas about the possibility of a human influence on the occurrence of great Wenchuan earthquake from last May:
Richard A. Kerr and Richard Stone (2009) SEISMOLOGY: A Human Trigger for the Great Quake of Sichuan? Science 16 January 2009: 322.
23rd International Congress on Large Dams and International Committee on Large Dams (ICOLD) 77th ANNUAL MEETING will be held in Brasilia, Brazil, in May 2009.
New information related to the nearest meeting at IASPEI meeting in Cape Town, South Africa:
The session Induced Seismicity (S4) will take place 13th of January (Tuesday).
Dr. Steve Spottiswoode from Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) in South Africa agreed to open the session with an invited presentation. The title of his talk will be "Challenges in Mine Seismology".
26 orals and 4 posters have been accepted for presentations in this session. Be prepared for a whole day high level meeting.
Dear all, please note that TAIS prepared a special directory, located in our download section, for the published proceedings of European Seismological Commision ESC2008 meeting in Hersonissos, Crete that is about to start in a few days.
If you want to share your poster/presentation with others, before or after the conference, please log into your TAIS account and choose Upload Materials link from your user menu. If you are already registered, follow this link. If you are not a registered member of TAIS website, you can register yourself here.
There is additional promotional material in the form of short PowerPoint presentation available for download: TAIS Information Slides - ESC2008
Induced Seismicity Session at IASPEI Gen. Assembly 2009
Written by Stanislaw Lasocki
Tuesday, 26 August 2008
Dear TAIS members,
Please find enclosed the information on the:
IASPEI GENERAL ASSEMBLY 2009, CAPE TOWN, SOUTH AFRICA: JANUARY 10 TO 16, 2009
SYMPOSIUM ON: INDUCED SEISMICITY (S4)
Lead convener: Stanislaw Lasocki, Poland Co-conveners: Andrzej Kijko, South Africa Aderson do Nascimento, Brasil Gerri van Aswegen, South Africa
Human technological activity provokes various, often unwanted responses. The phenomenon of triggered and induced seismicity is one example of such unwanted by-products. It can result from stress or pore pressure changes, from a volume change, from loading or unloading in the rockmass or from combinations of such causes. Therefore, induced earthquakes usually accompany mineral exploitation, hydrocarbon production, reservoir impoundment, geothermal energy production and many other technological processes that perturb the boundary conditions in the affected rockmass. In general these events give rise to a smaller energy release than that associated to natural earthquakes, yet they can be dangerous, often damaging and occasionally devastating. The hazards associated with triggered earthquakes are still frequently unpredictable and uncontrollable. The goal of this symposium is to summarize a present state of knowledge about the induced and triggered seismicity processes and to discuss future trends in the field. In South Africa where mining induced seismicity problems are of paramount importance the discussion, begun in Induced Seismicity workshop during the last IUGG in Perugia, will be continued. The problem of induced seismicity is intrinsically interdisciplinary, because it comprises a combination of human action on rocks with the rock response. Its research involves, therefore, also studies of the particular, quite different technological processes that lead to the induced seismic activity. The session is meant to help in identifying common areas of various induced seismic processes: the mining induced, reservoir induced, thermal induced etc. Similarities and differences between the natural and human induced seismicity are other aspects to be discussed. Which methods of earthquake seismology can and which cannot be transferred onto induced seismicity problems? To what extent induced activity can be considered as a scale laboratory relevant for natural seismic processes? Contributions addressing the above topics and all other problems of the induced seismicity are welcome.
The deadline for submission of abstracts is September 30, 2008.
For details and to submit an abstract please contact the web page: www.iaspei2009sa.com
We would appreciate if you also communicate this information to your colleagues.
The scientific programme of ESC2008 has been finalized. Please note some interesting induced-seismicity-related sessions, gathered in thematic area 3: Physics of Earthquake Source:
PHYS-1-FRACTURE: Fracture and Earthquake Physics.
PHYS-2-SOURCE: Natural and induced earthquakes: Double Couple and non-Double Couple source mechanisms.
PHYS-3-INDUCED: Fluid-injection induced seismicity - observations and modeling.
PHYS-4-PHYS: Physics of seismicity: field, laboratory and theoretical studies.
Please also note that the new section appeared in our download area and you can share your ESC2008 contributions by uploading your poster/presentation directly to our database.
Special session on Induced Seismicity at ESSSA2008
Written by Grzegorz Kwiatek
Tuesday, 24 June 2008
There is a special session on Induced Seismicity at the 80th annual meeting of the Eastern Section of the Seismological Society of America, that will be held 05–07 October 2008, in Kingston, Ontario. For details, see attached Second Circular.
New Challenges in Earthquake Dynamics: Observing and Modelling a Multi-Scale System
Dates: 18-23 October 2008
The aim of this conference is to discuss the recent advances in earthquake physics, in particular relating to earthquake interactions (observations, models). An emphasis will be given on the role of small scale processes and structures in controlling large scale earthquakes and regional seismicity. It will promote new, exploratory discussions on how to reconcile large scale regional models with small-scale controls on stress and seismicity.
New service has been recently launched at TAIS WG Website: TAIS WG Newsletter. The idea is to provide all subscribers of the newsletter with news published at TAIS WG Website related to triggered and induced seismicity. We plan to send newletters every one or two months (depending on the amount of information). If you are a registered member of TAIS WG, you will receive a letter asking you to confirm a subscription. If you are not registered, you can choose Newsletter from the main menu to subscribe or change your subscription status in the future.
The registered members can always change their subscription status by clicking on either Newsletter in the main menu, or Newsletter Management in their User Menu.
Natural and induced earthquakes: Double Couple and non-Double Couple
Written by Stanislaw Lasocki
Wednesday, 21 May 2008
Please note that the session "Natural and induced earthquakes: Double Couple and non-Double Couple source mechanisms" (Code: PHYS-2 - SOURCE ) will take place during European Seismological Commission ESC 2008, 31st General Assembly,"Creta Maris", Hersonissos, Crete, Greece (7- 12 September, 2008).
Iwould like to remind you that we shall have a TAIS symposium during the next IASPEI in Cape Town in the next year. This will be the symposium S4 – Induced seismicity. It is already announced in the Scientific Programme for Cape Town 2009 on IASPEI web page. Call for abstracts will be sent to you as well as exposed on our page soon. I doubt that I have addresses of all interested in the event, therefore anybody who wishes to receive the call and did not get the message from me about the start of TAIS website is asked to sendhis/her e-mail to me. My address is
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. I am sure that in South Africa, the place of long time research in induced seismicity we shall have an extremely interesting and fruitful meeting.
Stan Lasocki
Lead convener, S4 – Induced seismicity, Cape Town 2009
Today, a new feature has been added to TAIS WG Website: TAIS WG Forum. I hope you'll find it useful. I encourage you to contribute to forum extension by sending suggestions and comments in the following thread.
First Southern Hemisphere International Rock Mechanics Symposium, SHIRMS 2008, will be an innovative symposium bringing together rock mechanics researchers and practitioners from the main areas of earth sciences to exchange ideas and lessons learnt, and to develop further collaboration and synergies. This symposium will set the agenda for future research and operational directions, and ensure the ongoing viability of the mining and civil engineering industries. Key topic areas are: mining, civil engineering, petroleum and fundamental rock mechanics.
The symposium will cover applications related to all study areas of rockbursts and mine seismicity, with an emphasis on topics related to controlling rockburst hazard and sustainable development of deep mines.
Special Issue of Tectonophysics "The Monitoring of Induced Seismicity: Observations, Models and Interpretations", edited by Stanislaw Lasocki, Peter Suhadolc and Diana Comte will appear soon. The papers of the SI, listed below, are already on Articles in Press for Tectonophysics web page.
This Special Issue arises from presentations provided in the Special Session “Monitoring of Induced Seismicity: Observations, Models and Interpretations” of the 33rd General Assembly of IASPEI held in Santiago de Chile during October 2–8, 2005.
The goal of TAISWG is to summarize a present state of knowledge about the induced and triggered seismicity processes and to discuss future trends in the field. Its purpose is also to provide an overview of the capabilities and limitations of current monitoring techniques and interpretation methods as applied to triggered earthquakes to assess and mitigate the seismic hazard.
TAIS Working Group is a part of IASPEI Commission on Seismological Observation and Interpretation, CoSOI (current list of group members can be found here).
The Local Organizing Committee of ESC2008 is pleased to announce the organization of the 31st General Assembly of the European Seismological Commission to be held at the International Conference Center “Creta Maris”, Hersonissos, Crete, Greece, from 7 to 12 September, 2008.
14th European Meeting of Environmental and Engineering Geophysics
Written by Grzegorz Kwiatek
Friday, 11 April 2008
EAGE2008
Kraków has been chosen to host Near Surface 2008 – the 14th European Meeting of Environmental and Engineering Geophysics of the Near Surface Geoscience Division of EAGE. The meeting will be held 15–17 September 2008. The detailed information can be found on the official webpage: http://www.ns2008.agh.edu.pl/.
Human technological activity provokes various, often unwanted responses. The phenomenon of triggered and induced seismicity is one example of such unwanted by-products. It can result from stress or pore pressure changes, from a volume change, from loading or unloading in the rockmass or from combinations of such causes. Therefore, induced earthquakes usually accompany mineral exploitation, hydrocarbon production, reservoir impoundment, geothermal energy production and many other technological processes that perturb the boundary conditions in the affected rockmass. In general these events give rise to a smaller energy release than that associated to natural earthquakes, yet they can be dangerous, often damaging and occasionally devastating. The hazards associated with triggered earthquakes are still frequently unpredictable and uncontrollable.
The goal of this website is to summarize a present state of knowledge about the induced and triggered seismicity processes and to discuss future trends in the field. The problem of induced seismicity is intrinsically interdisciplinary, because it comprises a combination of human action on rocks with the rock response. Its research involves, therefore, also studies of the particular, quite different technological processes that lead to the induced seismic activity. The website is meant to help in identifying common areas of various induced seismic processes: the mining induced, reservoir induced, thermal induced etc. as well as the similarities and differences between the natural and human induced seismicity.
The technological response to increasing needs for energy and minerals results also in appearance of induced seismicity in previously aseismic areas;
Strong seismic events caused by human technological activity are dangerous for people, technical devices, and infrastructure objects;
The problems of estimation, prediction and mitigation of the hazards implied by induced seismicity have not found satisfactory solutions;
The present unsatisfactory level of understanding of the hazards implied by induced seismicity results partially from insufficient integration of research groups in the field,
we propose to initiate TEAMWORK FOR HAZARD ESTIMATION FOR TRIGGERED AND INDUCED SEISMICITY (THETAIS). THETAIS will be a virtual centre team to study all aspects of the seismic hazard due to triggered and induced seismicity. Presently, research groups dealing with induced seismicity are organized around technological processes that originate the seismicity. THETAIS initiative is intended to group scientists and industrial representatives in virtual research centers defined by specific scientific problems, which are common regardless the processes that cause seismicity. Cooperation within the teamwork will be supported by modern IT.
Some details describing THETAIS initiative are presented in the attached document.
The first open meeting of TEAMWORK FOR HAZARD ESTIMATION FOR TRIGGERED AND INDUCED SEISMICITY will take place during the ESC General Assembly A in Montpellier on Thursday, Sept. 9th at 12:00 (room Barthez, level 2). All interested are welcomed.
Please have a look into the email I (and possibly many of you) received today. I encourage you to undersign the open letter to the President of the Italian Republic and support our colleagues.
Dear colleagues and friends,
Two weeks ago the L’Aquila Prosecutor’s office indicted of manslaughter the members of the National High Risk Committee that met in L'Aquila one week before the Mw6.3 earthquake. The charges are for failing to provide a short term alarm to the population before the earthquake struck, killing more than 300 people. The president of INGV, Enzo Boschi (member of the High Risk Committee), and the director of the National Earthquake Center, Giulio Selvaggi (just accompanying Boschi to the meeting as technical specialist), are among the scientists in seismology and earthquake engineering now under investigation together with some civil protection officials.
The aim of the ECGS-FKPE Workshop on „Induced Seismicity“ is to bring together leading scientists that work in this field. In contrast to similar workshops on this theme, we want to bring together mainly academic researchers as well as representatives from state geological surveys or state earthquake onitoring agencies. A special volume of the Cahiers du Centre Européen de Géodynamique et de Séismologie will be published with extended abstracts to be printed just before the meeting).
News 
We'd like to invite you to submit abstracts and attend to the Session 09: Seismicity Induced by Human Technologycal Activity of 
Second_circular_ESSSA2008 (
First Southern Hemisphere International Rock Mechanics Symposium, SHIRMS 2008, will be an innovative symposium bringing together rock mechanics researchers and practitioners from the main areas of earth sciences to exchange ideas and lessons learnt, and to develop further collaboration and synergies. This symposium will set the agenda for future research and operational directions, and ensure the ongoing viability of the mining and civil engineering industries. Key topic areas are: mining, civil engineering, petroleum and fundamental rock mechanics.
