Classification of clustered microseismic events in a coal mine using machine learning

Discrimination of seismicity distributed in different areas is essential for reliable seismic risk assessment in mines. Although machine learning has been widely applied in seismic data processing, feasibility and reliability of applying this technique to classify spatially clustered seismic events in underground mines are yet to be investigated. In this research, two groups of seismic events with a minimum local magnitude (ML) of −3 were observed in an underground coal mine. They were respectively located around a dyke and the longwall face. Additionally, two types of undesired signals were also recorded. Four machine learning methods, i.e. random forest (RF), support vector machine (SVM), deep convolutional neural network (DCNN), and residual neural network (ResNN), were used for classifying these signals. The results obtained based on a primary dataset showed that these seismic events could be classified with at least 91% accuracy. The DCNN using seismogram images as the inputs reached the best performance with more than 94% accuracy. As mining is a dynamic progress which could change the characteristics of seismic signals, the temporal variance in the prediction performance of DCNN was also investigated to assess the reliability of this classifier during mining. A cascaded workflow consisting of database update, model training, signal prediction, and results review was established. By progressively calibrating the DCNN model, it achieved up to 99% prediction accuracy. The results demonstrated that machine learning is a reliable tool for the automatic discrimination of spatially clustered seismicity in underground mining. •Machine learning can classify spatially clustered seismic events.•Deep convolutional neural network with images as input performs the best.•Evaluation on temporal changes of classification performance is essential.•A cascaded workflow ensures excellent classification performance.•Reliable classification of seismic events can be achieved during dynamic mining.