Drilling of additional FEAR boreholes started last week

The drilling campaign for additional FEAR boreholes started last week. In the next two weeks, eight boreholes with lengths of 9 to 12 meters each will be drilled. They are designed for the placement of highly sensitive acoustic emission sensors which will be part of the initial phase of the FEAR Integrated Monitoring System (FIMoS). The full FIMoS, which will be built in phases, will be a large array of multi-disciplinary sensors installed in boreholes drilled from the to-be-constructed FEAR side tunnel and near the target rupture planes. FIMoS is designed to monitor, record, and image faulting processes at very close distances with high precision. We expect to record more than 100’000 micro-earthquakes in the magnitude range -4 to 2 throughout the duration of the FEAR project.