In collaboration with GFZ Helmholtz Centre for Geosciences (Section 2.6 Seismic Hazard and Risk Dynamics) and University of Queensland we are extending the World Stress Map with pore pressure data, initiating a World Pressure Map.

Initiating, building and maintaining the World Pressure Map is a long term goal of the Professorship for Geothermal Technologies and currently supported by the German Research Foundation (DFG; Project Number:  517908693) and the International Lithosphere Program (Task Force 2026-TF3).

The World Pressure Map is the global continuation of the Bavarian Pressure Map, which was developed as part of the Geothermal-Alliance Bavaria.

Project goals (2023 - 2026):

The project aims to develop a global database for pore pressure magnitude data. The database will be made publicly available through in the existing World Stress Map (www.world-stress-map.org) services to ensure long-term availability as a key future resource for a broad community. The resulting “World Pressure Map” database is going to be initiated with publicly available datasets from drilled ICDP wells and published and public datasets from Europe, Australia and the USA, but also other parts of the World. A globally valid quality ranking scheme for pore pressure magnitude data, such as pressure build up during production and formation testing and well control situations (kicks and influxes) and combinations of mud gas and measured pressures within the wellbore is planned to be developed based on these datasets.

Relationships between geophysical properties of shales (in particular seismic and sonic velocity, short: shale velocity) and vertical effective stress (difference between vertical stress and pore pressure) have been proven useful to predict pore pressure in areas, where no pore pressure measurements are available, but the derivation of these relationships usually remains an expert task. A global and quality-ranked pore pressure magnitude database offers the first-time opportunity to investigate and compare quality-weighted relationships between vertical effective stress and shale velocity on a global scale and to provide a basis for first order pore pressure predictions.