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 aims at supporting the energy transition in Europe and beyond by creating transformational data-fusion platforms to inform and enhance global exploration frameworks for deep geothermal resources and critical minerals. 

To fulfill these objectives, EarthSafe assembles a multi-disciplinary research and educational network that breaks ground in the way it integrates scientific disciplines for Earth imaging and exploration. It does so by working within a systems thinking framework, recognizing and exploiting key connections between seemingly detached research areas, and integrating them into new conceptual, theoretical and methodological innovations that move beyond discipline-specific approaches.

It is precisely this unique transdisciplinary philosophy that allows EarthSafe to offer innovative solutions to  problems that otherwise would not be possible to tackle. The general approach of EarthSafe is also multi-dimensional in the sense that crucial social aspects, effective science communication, geoethics and engagement with the general public and regulatory authorities are formally addressed in conjunction with the many technical advances.

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