A Geological Service for EU (GSEU)

Introduction

Together with the rest of the world the European Union faces the challenge of sustainably finding, exploiting, and administering the energy and raw materials of the Earth, as well as the demands for monitoring ongoing changes in the global geo-environment. Many societally and economically relevant geological features, phenomena, and concepts cross the borders of individual countries in Europe as well as globally.

One of the key issues in solving the problems is to map the existing resources and phenomena and to keep up with the fast pace of changes at the European level. The Geological Service for Europe (GSEU) project solves problems emerging from this challenging background by up-to-date coverage of harmonized multi-national geodata and fluent useability of them by shared solutions of geographic information systems and tools developed by the European geological services. The GSEU is a five-year coordination and support action (CSA) funded by the European Union, supporting the objectives of the European Green Deal and of Horizon Europe. The project topics and goals also support the strategies of achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) of the United Nations covering the use of natural resources and raw materials originated from geosphere, like minerals, energy, and water.

GTK participates in the project’s work on critical raw materials, groundwater, and marine coastal areas. In addition, it is involved in strengthening the geo-knowledge-based scientific framework and in the common parts of the project, such as the creation and communication of the structure and operation of the GSEU. GTK contributes its key expertise to the development of the International Centre of Excellence on Sustainable Resources Management for the European Union (EU ICE SRM), which will be established in connection with the project. The purpose of the Centre of Excellence is to support the implementation of the United Nations Framework Classification for Resources (UNFC) in accordance with the UN Resource Management System (UNRMS). Furthermore, GTK’s knowledge of subarctic and Arctic regions is utilised in the harmonisation of groundwater quality and groundwater monitoring data and in the digitalization of groundwater data collection, as well as in sustainable location studies of coastal renewable energy units, such as wind farms.

The GSEU project (2022-2027), funded by the European Union Horizon Europe programme, is coordinated by Europe-wide EuroGeoSurveys, and led by the Dutch applied research institute TNO. This project continues the harmonisation and standardisation effort initiated in previous projects of the GeoERA program funded by EU Horizon 2020, by widening and strengthening the scientific and national stakeholder network to foster the creation of a permanent structure of a European Geological Service. The project has a budget of approximately EUR 23.2 million, involving 48 partners from 35 different European countries. More information can be found from the project’s website https://www.geologicalservice.eu.

Disclaimer: “Funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the authors only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Climate, Infrastructure and Environment Executive Agency (CINEA), under the powers delegated by the European Commission. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.”

Contact person: Soile Aatos

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