Towards a Near-Surface Velocity Model of Groningen using Transdimensional Markov Chains

Summary A reliable near-surface velocity is of great importance for seismic hazard analysis and hypocenter location estimation. In this paper, we use transdimensional Markov chain Monte Carlo to infer near-surface shear wave velocity structure from interferometric responses between borehole receivers in the Groningen area. By naturally preferring simple models over more complex models, the algorithm is able to better estimate the depth of an interface, provided only a few velocity interfaces exist. In addition, it provides us with an estimate of the variance of the recovered velocity model.