Seismic event classification with a lightweight Fourier Neural Operator model

Real-time monitoring of induced seismicity is critical to mitigate operational risks, relying on the rapid and accurate classification of triggered data from continuous data streams. Deep learning models are effective for this purpose but require substantial computational resources, making real-time processing difficult. To address this limitation, a lightweight model based on the Fourier Neural Operator (FNO) is proposed for the classification of microseismic events, leveraging its inherent resolution-invariance and computational efficiency for waveform processing. In the STanford EArthquake Dataset (STEAD), a global and large-scale database of seismic waveforms, the FNO-based model demonstrates high effectiveness for trigger classification, with an F1 score of 95% even in the scenario of data sparsity in training. The new FNO model greatly decreases the computer power needed relative to current deep learning models without sacrificing the classification success rate measured by the F1 score. A test on a real microseismic dataset shows a classification success rate with an F1 score of 98%, outperforming many traditional deep-learning techniques. The reduced computational cost makes the proposed FNO model well suited for deployment in resource-constrained, near-real-time seismic monitoring workflows, including traffic-light implementations. The source code for the proposed FNO classifier will be available at: https://github.com/ayratabd/FNOclass.