[granos]

Hypothetically, if you could cause earthquakes in a controlled way, it may be possible to perform periodic small stress relief quakes rather than allowing one big one to occur naturally. We can't stop it moving, but maybe we can make it move on our terms.

[eloff]

Exactly, this seems like an interesting avenue to explore.

[pmontra]

I think to remember that wet faults (as in "there is water mixed with the rocks") slide more frequently that dry faults and yield energy in less powerful bursts. If so, lubrificating faults could be a solution. Unfortunately I found a paper from 2017 [1] that suggests that it's not so simple. There are many more micro conditions that can trigger an earthquake.

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5580450/