Understanding the mechanism of seismicity is crucial in reducing hazardous seismic risks (such as induced earthquakes, coal/rockburst, or gas outburst) associated with rock engineering activities, such as coal mining, hard rock mining, tunnelling, hydraulic fracturing, deep wastewater disposal, and geothermal energy production. These engineering activities can change the stresses around underground spaces, and the variation of stress exerted on the surrounding rocks can result in induced seismicity. In laboratory tests, acoustic emissions can be generated in the damage and failure process of coal/rock specimens under loading.

Seismic monitoring in the field is a powerful tool in understanding rock properties at depth and their evolution with stress perturbations, fluid injection, or temperature changes in relation to rock engineering activities. Therefore, understanding the evolution of the mechanical properties of rock and the associated stress-strain evolutions in the laboratory, how they relate to the seismic attributes measured in the field, and how they are impacted by anthropogenic perturbations, such as stress, pressure, or temperature, is a challenging task for the improvement of rock engineering safety and stability.

This Special Issue focuses on seismic responses to rock engineering activities, including coal mining, hard rock mining, tunnelling, hydraulic fracturing, deep wastewater disposal, and geothermal energy production, involving the latest achievements in theoretical analyses, numerical modelling, laboratory experiments, and in-situ investigations. We welcome both original research and review articles.

Potential topics include but are not limited to the following:

• Mechanisms of induced seismicity
• Numerical modelling of seismicity
• Acoustic emission performance in laboratory tests
• Laboratory simulations of induced seismicity
• Seismicity evolution in coal/rock failure
• Microseismic monitoring at field scale
• Seismic-derived stress inversion technique
• Seismicity source location technique
• Joint inversion of source location and focal mechanism of seismicity
• Mechanical properties and fracture mechanism of deep rock mass
• Shear fracture characteristics of rock mass under dynamic disturbance
• Shear mechanism and acoustic emission of joints in dynamic and static state