News

The FEAR project aims to improve our understanding of how earthquakes initiate and propagate by studying fault behaviour under carefully controlled conditions. One of the project's key scientific objectives is to trigger a controlled earthquake of approximately magnitude 1 within a natural fault zone located deep underground and directly accessible for experimentation and monitoring through BedrettoLab’s research infrastructure.

The previous FEAR-2 experiment provided valuable insights into the behaviour of the fault and confirmed the performance of the experimental infrastructure and monitoring systems. The upcoming experiment will build on these findings and further investigate the conditions under which controlled fault slip and earthquake rupture occur.

During the experiment, water will be injected into the fault zone through two boreholes. The injection is expected to last approximately 3 to 5 days. This time, however, we plan to reach high pressures quite rapidly, as fast as technically possible. The experiment will be monitored continuously in real time from the BedrettoLab control centre at ETH Zürich.

A dense monitoring network consisting of sensors installed in and around the fault, including instruments measuring seismic activity, rock deformation, fluid pressure, temperature, and geochemical changes, will record the fault response throughout the experiment. These observations will help researchers better understand the physical processes that govern earthquake nucleation and fault activation.

The experiment has undergone a detailed safety and risk assessment, and multiple layers of safety measures are in place. All injection activities are remotely supervised, and no personnel are present in the BedrettoLab during the main injection phase.

Based on the safety and risk assessment, the seismic risk associated with the experiment is considered very low. Earthquakes generated during the experiment are not expected to be felt at the surface, in nearby buildings, or in the Furka Base Tunnel. The experiment will be conducted under strict operational limits and continuously monitored. If predefined safety thresholds are exceeded, injection operations will be stopped immediately.

Further updates and results will be published following completion of the experiment.