Texas Railroad Commission turns to artificial intelligence to improve seismicity review process

AUSTIN – The Railroad Commission has turned to artificial intelligence to optimize the time the agency's technical analysts spend on seismicity reviews to ensure residents and the environment are protected. Seismicity reviews are conducted by the Underground Injection Control (UIC) Department for injection/disposal well permits in areas susceptible to earthquakes and in certain geologic zones. UIC staff programed a machine learning algorithm to help with the large amount of information that needs to be processed and digested. Along with some other changes, tasks performed by the machine learning algorithm have enabled UIC to wipe out a backlog of seismic reviews to zero today. Like the technical analyst, the AI program weighs many factors related to the number, severity and proximity of earthquakes and uses a decision tree to assign a grade to the review.