Due to the deep socioeconomic implications, induced seismicity is a timely and increasingly relevant topic of interest for the general public. Cases of induced seismicity have a global distribution and involve a large number of industrial operations, with many documented cases from as far back to the beginning of the twentieth century. However, the sparse and fragmented documentation available makes it difficult to have a clear picture on our understanding of the physical phenomenon and consequently in our ability to mitigate the risk associated with induced seismicity. This review presents a unified and concise summary of the still open questions related to monitoring, discrimination, and management of induced seismicity in the European context and, when possible, provides potential answers. We further discuss selected critical European cases of induced seismicity, which led to the suspension or reduction of the related industrial activities.
10 June 2014 in Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America
This letter aims at analyzing the potentialities of the ground-based microwave radar interferometry technique for the dynamic characterization of civil infrastructures. This technique has been applied to estimate the fundamental dynamic parameters of the reinforced concrete Musmeci bridge in Basilicata region (southern Italy). The results have been validated by the comparison with the ones obtained applying consolidated techniques using data from accelerometers and tromometers. The good agreement obtained could suggest the joint application of such techniques as a new technological approach to set up a non-invasive and non-destructive evaluation procedure for structural health monitoring of infrastructures.
On 2 June 2006 the wastewater produced during the oil and gas field exploitation in High Agri Valley (southern Italy) started to be managed by disposal through pumping the fluids back into the subsurface at the Costa Molina 2 (CM2) injection well, located in the southeastern sector of the valley. The onset of microearthquakes (Ml ≤ 2) after 4 days at about 1.3 km SW of CM2 well suggests fluid injection induced seismicity by the diffusion of pore pressure. Moreover, the space‐time evolution of 196 high‐resolution relocated events reveals a previously unmapped NE dipping fault. We investigate the physical processes related to the fluid injection induced seismicity and delineate the previously unmapped fault by jointly analyzing seismicity data, geological observations, fluid injection data, the stratigraphic log of the CM2 well, and the electrical resistivity tomography survey carried out in the study area.
20 February 2015 in Natural Hazards and Earth System Sciences
In the frame of a national project funded by Eni S.p.A. and developed by three institutes of the National Research Council (the Institute of Methodologies for Environmental Analysis, the Institute of Research for Hydrogeological Protection and the Institute for Electromagnetic Sensing of the Environment), a multidisciplinary approach based on the integration of satellite, aero-photogrammetric and in situ geophysical techniques was applied to investigate an area located in the Montemurro territory in the southeastern sector of the High Agri Valley (Basilicata Region, southern Italy). This paper reports the results obtained by the joint analysis of in situ geophysical surveys, aerial photos interpretation, morphotectonic investigation, geological field survey and borehole data. The joint analysis of different data allowed us (1) to show the shallow geological and structural setting, (2) to detect the geometry of the different lithological units and their mechanical and dynamical properties, (3) to image a previously unmapped fault beneath suspected scarps/warps and (4) to characterize the geometry of an active landslide affecting the study area.