Coal bursts have emerged as the most critical mining hazard for underground coal mines around the world. Seismic monitoring and seismic clustering analysis are the cornerstones to develop an understanding of and to quantify coal burst hazards. The prerequisite to successfully detect seismic clustering behaviours is the accuracy of locating seismic events, which however can be a challenging task in underground coal mines. Therefore, the characteristics of location errors of seismic events and their impact on clustering results should be explicitly investigated and considered in seismic cluster analysis. Based on nine months of seismic data and 24 coal bursts from a longwall panel, this paper considers location errors and proposes a modified seismic clustering method to improve the results available for coal burst hazard assessment. The location errors in the area of interest were firstly assessed using the emulation testing method. Within the determined location errors, the clustering possibility between seismic events was calculated. The characteristics of the possible seismic clustering along with mining, named as “the Number of Possible Clustered Events” (NPCE), were investigated. The results showed that location errors presented large variations and strong anisotropic patterns in the longwall panel, with values ranging from 20 to more than 80 m. The NPCE result presented an improved detection on seismic clustering behaviour, and the high NPCE values also indicated a strong correlation with coal burst damages observed at the mine. Several intensive seismic clustering zones were observed in more than two months prior to the longwall passing these locations, which suggest that the method can be used for the medium to long term seismic hazard assessment.

煤炭爆炸已成为世界各地地下煤矿最严重的采矿危险。地震监测地震聚类分析和地震聚类分析是了解和量化煤爆危险的基石。成功检测地震聚类行为的前提是地震事件定位的准确性，但这在地下煤矿中可能是一项艰巨的任务。因此，应在地震聚类分析中明确研究和考虑地震事件定位误差的特征及其对聚类结果的影响。基于9个月的地震数据和长壁面板上的24个煤爆，本文考虑了位置误差，并提出了一种改进的地震聚类方法，以改善可用于煤爆危险评估的结果。首先使用仿真测试方法评估感兴趣区域中的位置误差。在确定的位置错误内，计算了地震事件之间的聚类可能性。可能发生的地震聚类和采矿的特征称为“可能聚类事件的数量”（NPCE ），进行了调查。结果表明，定位误差在长壁板中表现出较大的变化和强烈的各向异性，其值范围为20至80 m以上。所述NPCE结果呈现在地震聚类行为改进的检测，而高NPCE值也表示与在矿井煤观察到爆裂损害具有强相关性。在长壁通过这些位置之前的两个多月中，观察到了几个密集的地震聚集带，这表明该方法可用于中长期地震危险性评估。