Towards a global and quality-ranked pore pressure magnitude database - World Pressure Map

Deformation of the Earth’s crust is fundamentally governed by subsurface stress and pore fluid pressure, which together define effective stress as the difference between total stress and pore pressure. Effective stress controls a wide range of processes, such as fluid migration, sediment compaction, subsidence, fault reactivation and the earthquake cycle. It is also a key parameter for the design of subsurface engineering such as drilling operations, fluid and heat production as well as storage of CO₂, radioactive waste, hydrogen and energy. For the safe exploration and operation of georeservoirs and for the development of mitigation strategies of induced hazard such as borehole failure, leakage due to fault reactivation, or induced seismicity a reliable quantification of the effective stress is essential.

Over the past four decades, subsurface horizontal stress orientations and, more recently, stress magnitudes have been systematically compiled and analysed using dedicated quality-ranking schemes. The data are publicly available through the World Stress Map (WSM) database. In contrast, pore pressure data remain fragmented and inconsistently documented. Where available, pore pressure information is typically dispersed across national, regional, commercial or private databases, as well as scientific publications and technical reports. Publicly accessible pore pressure databases are rare and generally lack standardised formats or the application of a common quality assessment. Furthermore, although pore pressure measurements have been collected since the early development of deep drilling primarily by the petroleum industry, most datasets have not been published due to confidentiality concerns. Consequently, pore pressure information is often limited to isolated case studies or regional analyses that neither provide digital data nor precise spatial referencing.

As a result, a global database with quality-ranked pore pressure data complementary to the WSM does not yet exist. This absence represents a major limitation for both fundamental geoscience research and practical application in reservoir management required for a sustainable energy future. To address this gap, this contribution aims to initiate the development of a global database using a quality-ranking scheme for direct pore pressure measurements and indirect pore pressure indicators. The proposed open-access resource referred to as the World Pressure Map is intended to combine data from different methods to make them comparable and to ensure long-term data availability.