Advancing frontier knowledge of the solid earth by providing access to integrated and customized services: the Geo-INQUIRE project

Abstract

Modern scientific endeavours already have the capacity to call upon a vast variety of data, often in huge volumes. However, the challenge is not only how to make the most of such a resource, but also how to make it available to the wider scientific community, especially for encouraging curiosity-driven research. Fifty-one institutions from 13 countries are currently working together in the Geo-INQUIRE (Geosphere INfrastructure for QUestions into Integrated REsearch) project.The main goal of this new project is to enhance, give access to, and make interoperable, key datasets of the Geoscience community. This will include "big" data streams and high-performance computing codes which are critical to studying the temporal variation of the solid Earth, forecasting multi-hazards, evaluating Georesources and the analysis of the interface between the solid Earth as well as oceans and atmosphere.  About 150 access points – both on-site and virtually are involved. Transnational Access (TA, both virtual and on-site) will be provided at six test beds across Europe: the Bedretto Laboratory, Switzerland; the Ella-Link Geolab, Portugal; the Liguria-Nice-Monaco submarine infrastructure, Italy/France; the Irpinia Near-Fault Observatory, Italy; the Eastern Sicily facility, Italy; and the Corinth Rift Laboratory, Greece.Several European Research Infrastructure Consortia take part, namely the European Plate Observing System (EPOS) for solid Earth and geodynamics observations, the European Multidisciplinary Seafloor and Water Column Observatory (EMSO) for deep-sea and coastal observations, and ECCSEL for CO2 capture, utilization, transport, and storage, and geoenergy. This 16 million Euro project started in October 2022, within the Horizon Europe Infrastructure program of the European Union.The presentation will briefly describe the project and give examples of curiosity-driven research topics which will be made possible through such a multi-disciplinary project. We will finally present the challenges and efforts made to comply with FAIR principles and accompany the dissemination of the data with innovative and cross-disciplinary training activities.