Knowledge of heat flow and its distribution across the Earth’s surface provides a unique and critical foundation for understanding the regional geothermal energy potential and resources. This project supports the ongoing development of a research data infrastructure for global heat flow data and the ongoing Global Heat Flow Data Assessment Project, where the existing global collection of heat-flow data undergoes a revision and update of each entry within the next two years.

The principal aim of the proposed project is to accelerate the assessment process and to achieve an overall revision rate of 90% of data until 2026. We assess the current IHFC database on geothermal heat flow (www.ihfc-iugg.org) by screening the original literature for information and updating field entries that are wrong or missing according to the new metadata and quality scheme. Missing data and metadata will be added; wrong data will be corrected. The final goal is to create a comprehensive and authenticated database, including detailed metadata descriptions of each heat-flow datum’s type and quality. We will make a special effort to search, extract and incorporate data from original/primary literature sources and replace existing data records derived from secondary data compilations. Moreover, the collaborative approach and the broad community support by our international network will facilitate a systematic global literature survey to identify and incorporate additional heat-flow data not yet within the global database. It is hoped that this collegiate approach will extend to collaborating industry partners to identify and release data from otherwise inaccessible industrial archives.