IS-EPOS: A DIGITAL RESEARCH SPACE TO FACILITATE INTEGRATED APPROACH TO ANTHROPOGENIC SEISMIC HAZARDS

The problem of hazards induced by exploration and exploitation of georesources focuses growing interest of science, industry, public administration, NGO-s and general public. Anthropogenic seismicity, i.e. the undesired dynamic rockmass response to georesources exploitation, is one of the examples of unwanted by-products of technological occupation of humans. It becomes a real problem in areas previously known as aseismic and in association with quite diverse technological processes. The socioeconomic impact of the induced seismicity is very significant. Induced earthquakes can cause material loss, injuries and even fatalities. The anthropogenic seismic hazards are undoubtedly linked to particular inducing technologies. However, the rockmass reactions to inducing factors of the same physical kind have much in common. The research focused on common features of these reactions and transverse to inducing technologies seems to be the way to accelerate recognition of the problem. This can be accomplished only on through integration of research based on the most advanced ICT solutions. We present here IS-EPOS IT-platform, which is an open virtual access point for researchers studying anthropogenic seismicity and related hazards. The relevant seismic and non-seismic data are gathered in the so-called episodes of induced seismicity. The episode is a comprehensive data description of a seismic process, induced or triggered by human technological activity, which under certain circumstances can become hazardous for people, infrastructure and the environment. The episode consists of a time-correlated collectio n of seismic data representing the seismic process, technological data representing the technological activity, which is the cause of this process and all other relevant geodata describing the environment, in which the technological activity and its result or by-product, the seismic process take place. The IS-EPOS platform integrates presently six episodes of anthropogenic seismicity respectively linked to underground hard rock and coal mining in Poland, hydro energy production in Poland and Vietnam and geothermal energy production experiment in Germany. The researcher accessing the platform can make use of low level software services for data browsing, selecting and visualizing and a number of high level services for advanced data processing out of which the probabilistic seismic analysis service group is particularly rich. The IS-EPOS platform is a prototype of TCS Anthropogenic Hazards belonging to pan-European multidisciplinary research platform created within European P late Observing System long-term plan for the integration of national and transnational research infrastructures for solid Earth science in Europe.