View all news

Understanding man-made earthquakes, their ground motions and building vulnerability in the UK

Oil well in Lincolnshire.  IMAGE CREDIT geograph.org.uk - 1139065 by Jonathan Billinger. Licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0 via Commons -

Oil wells, like this one in Lincolnshire, use hydraulic fracturing which can cause small man-made earthquakes. geograph.org.uk - 1139065 by Jonathan Billinger. Licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0 via Commons -

3 December 2015

Funded by the Cabot Institute Innovation Fund 2015, this interdisciplinary project will focus on the risk of man-made earthquakes in the UK.

In recent years, shallow, low-magnitude earthquakes, such as Lorca in Spain, demonstrated the damage potential that relatively small events can have in regions unaccustomed to seismicity. The comparatively large losses are attributed to vulnerable characteristics of building stock and to the lack of preparedness of local communities. This lack of resilience is often also applicable to human-induced earthquakes (e.g. from fracking) and, so it is a concern for stakeholders in the UK.

Although human-induced earthquakes rarely exceed magnitude 5, they may still cause non-structural damage in non-seismically designed buildings and, above all, they can cause concerns in local communities.  For sound decision and policy-making, it is therefore important to provide governments, businesses and communities with objective and accurate risk estimates that are tailored to induced earthquakes in terms of hazards, vulnerability and exposure.

This interdisciplinary project by Dr Flavia de Luca (Civil Engineering) and co-applicants Maximilian Werner and James Verdon (Earth Sciences) will be focused on risk due to induced earthquakes in the UK. Their pilot study will use observations of shaking levels and building-response from low-magnitude, shallow tectonic earthquakes as proxies for the potential effects of man-made earthquakes in the UK (for which little data exists). They anticipate developing research bids through joint workshops with representation from the regulator, the British Geological Survey, industry partners, and social scientists.

Edit this page