Research Overview

I graduated in 2019 from University College Cork in Ireland with a BSc in Financial Mathematics & Actuarial Science. Knowing that my interest lied in Statistics, I joined the STOR-i programme in 2020. After successfully completing the MRes year, I started my PhD in October 2021. My PhD project is entitled “Assessment of hazard and risk due to induced seismicity for underground CO2 storage and oil and gas production assets”. This is supervised by Prof. Jonathan Tawn, Prof. Peter Atkinson and Dr. Zak Varty. The project is partnered with Shell where I’m supervised by Dr. Ross Towe.

Production of oil and gas can in some circumstances cause seismic activity. Problematic levels of seismic activity are rare and occur only in a small minority of oil and gas fields. However, the potential impact of high levels of seismic activity justifies careful monitoring and modelling of hazards and risks. This project aims to improve upon current statistical models of marked point pattern data to inform the assessment of seismic hazards.

Currently, I’m working on extending a new threshold selection method developed for this setting. This method was developed based on characteristics of the data available for induced seismicity at the Groningen gas field. My current research looks at using a similar approach in more general extreme value contexts.

Homepage: https://www.lancaster.ac.uk/stor-i-student-sites/conor-murphy/