Geothermal Energy Potential Map in Western Lithuania: Data Integration, Kriging, Simulation, and Neural Network Prediction

This study develops a reproducible regional screening workflow to assess geothermal potential in the Cambrian reservoir system of Western Lithuania under conditions of sparse and heterogeneous legacy subsurface data. The approach integrates data compilation, cleaning, and harmonization from archival well materials, ordinary kriging spatialization of key reservoir properties with uncertainty multipliers, standardized doublet simulations to derive comparative thermal performance indicators, and a neural network surrogate to accelerate regional inference. The workflow integrates 12 compiled reservoir control points into a gridded regional representation (25 × 30 cells; ~6750 km2) and evaluates uncertainty through low, mid and high scenarios (±10%). Physics-based simulations were executed for 303 representative grid locations per scenario, yielding cumulative extracted-energy indicators on the order of 105–107 MWh across cases (reported as comparative indicators). The neural network surrogate reproduced simulation outputs with a high predictive agreement (test R2 = 0.996; cross-validation mean R2 ≈ 0.99), enabling swift prediction across the remaining grid cells after training. Relative potential maps highlight spatially coherent zones of higher prospectivity and provide a transparent basis for prioritizing follow-up investigations and data acquisition. The proposed framework is modular and can be refined as improved geological constraints, thermophysical properties, and operational assumptions become available.