ABOUT US

Who we are and what we do

EarthSafe: a unique approach

The inevitable transition to green technologies and renewable energy sources in a densely populated world will put tremendous pressure on our planet. EarthSafe is committed to supporting this energy transition across Europe and beyond by developing transformative data-fusion platforms that inform and strengthen global frameworks for the exploration of deep geothermal resources and critical minerals.

To achieve these goals, EarthSafe brings together a multidisciplinary research and education network that redefines how scientific disciplines collaborate in Earth imaging and exploration. Operating within a systems-thinking framework, the project identifies and leverages connections between seemingly unrelated fields, integrating them into novel conceptual, theoretical, and methodological innovations that transcend traditional discipline-specific boundaries.

It is precisely this unique transdisciplinary philosophy that empowers EarthSafe to deliver innovative solutions to challenges that conventional approaches are ill-equipped to address. The project’s strategy is also inherently multi-dimensional: in addition to its technological advances, EarthSafe formally incorporates essential social considerations, including science communication, geoethics, and active engagement with the public and regulatory bodies.

The Consortium

EarthSafe brings together two world-leading institutions/groups in computational engineering and applied mathematics (SISSA and LaCaN/UPC), two top institutions in Earth observation, geoscientific data analysis and modelling (University of Twente and Durham University) along with the support and contribution from nine key associated partners form industry, academia, governmental and non-governmental organizations from Europe and beyond, covering different aspects of the deep geothermal and minerals sectors.

Work Packages

Diagramming 101 (Community) (Copy)
Collaborative structure of the Work Packages

WP1

“ML for seismic data reconstruction and tomographic upscaling”. The seismic structure of vast parts of the world is only partially known, due to either the lack of land stations (i.e. seismometers) or the low resolution resulting from coarse parameterizations of the inverse tomographic problem. WP1 will make use of Deep Learning, super-resolution, joint inversion and homogenization theory to obtain sharper and more reliable seismic images in data-poor regions.

WP2

“Fast forward solvers and VVUQ”. Numerical models are at the core of the methods proposed in EarthSafe. WP2 deals with the investigation of Reduced Order Modelling from three different points of views: i) its efficiency, ii) its accuracy and iii) their coupling with inversion/ML methods. WP2 also includes the development of thermo-chemical-mechanical codes to model multi-component, multi-phase reactive transport with complex (realistic) rheologies within the context of magmatic mineral systems.

WP3

“Data-fusion probabilistic inversions”. To make full use of the complementarity of different datasets and disciplines we require an integrative digital platform (Digital Earth Twin) capable of combining and exploiting their individual strengths. WP3 will focus on the creation of such data-fusion platform under the general framework of Bayesian inference (or Bayesian inversion).

WP4

“The social factor: influential engagement strategies”. The successful implementation and adoption of the scientific technologies developed in other WPs relies on effective communication and engagement with a wide range of stakeholder groups. WP4 adds a research-based social innovation component to support the creation and adoption of socially-responsible and sustainable practices for critical minerals, geothermal energy and related technologies.

Our academic partners are

Our associated partners are