The Critical Role of Pre-Survey Design in Microseismic Monitoring and Moment Tensor Inversion: Recent Advances, Challenges, and Future Directions

Summary Microseismic monitoring has become a cornerstone diagnostic tool for unconventional reservoir stimulation, carbon storage, and geothermal energy production. It provides critical insights into fracture geometry, stress reorientation, and induced seismicity. However, the reliability of event detection, location accuracy, and moment tensor inversion (MTI) is strongly conditioned by survey design performed prior to acquisition. Despite its decisive role, survey planning often receives less emphasis than acquisition logistics or post-processing workflows, leading to systematic biases that cannot be fully corrected later ( Zimmer, 2011 ; Kwiatek et al., 2016 ). Recent advances such as distributed acoustic sensing (DAS), hybrid surface-downhole arrays, and waveform-based MTI ( Lecoulant et al., 2023 ) have dramatically expanded monitoring capabilities. At the same time, these technologies have increased the risks associated with poorly designed geometries. Sub-optimal azimuthal coverage, velocity uncertainties, and noise exposure can bias stress orientation estimates or introduce spurious non-double-couple components in MTI ( Grechka, 2010 ). This has motivated renewed focus on simulation-based survey design, which allows quantitative assessment of detectability and inversion stability in advance of field deployment.