Induced Seismicity Monitoring—Comparison of Surface Deployed DAS Arrays Versus Other Common Seismicity Monitoring Techniques

Summary The paper investigates various induced seismicity monitoring (ISM) technologies for a hypothetical carbon capture and storage (CCS) site in the Southern North Sea. The study compares five deployment scenarios: ocean bottom seismometers (OBS), downhole geophones, downhole distributed acoustic sensing (DAS), surface DAS (S-DAS), and a hybrid S-DAS plus downhole DAS network. Each network’s performance is evaluated based on detectability of microseismic events, spatial coverage, and uncertainty in event location. The results indicate that all networks can detect microseismic events above a magnitude (ML) −0.8 within at least 1.7 km of the injection wellbore. However, the sensitivity and spatial coverage vary significantly among them. Joint downhole and surface DAS network was found to have the best performance with surface DAS network a close second. However, the choice of technology should consider local conditions and operational constraints.