In the Helmholtz infrastructure project SAFAtor (SMART Cables And Fibre-optic Sensing Amphibious Demonstrator), existing telecommunications cables on the seabed are used as sensors and a test cable is equipped with new sensor technology. The aim is to gather important data on climate, ocean currents and geological hazards.

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 when encouraging curiosity-driven research. The project will do so by enhancing, giving access to, and making interoperable key datasets.

Deep geothermal energy (DGE) is a source of clean, renewable, and sustainable energy with the potential for widespread applicability from naturally occurring reservoirs to Enhanced Geothermal Systems (EGS), where reservoir enhancement procedures such as hydraulic stimulations are carried out to improve or create fluid conductivity and effectively deep heat resources.

Confronting carbon emissions in Central-East Europe

The CHENILLE project aims to investigate the physical processes induced by thermal and hydraulic loading in a small fault zone within a highly consolidated shale formation

The WSM compiles globally information on the present-day stress field of the Earth's crust. The WSM database included 42,870 stress data records in its current release 2016. It is a collaborative project between academia, industry and government that aims to characterize the stress patterns and to understand the stress sources. The project commenced in 1986 as a part of the International Lithosphere Program; since 2009 the project is maintained and further developed at the GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences.

How can we best identify and quantify uncertainties in the earthquake process and capture them in the analysis of seismic hazard and risk for nuclear safety? What are the most effective means of reducing uncertainties and can we validate hazard and risk assessments using available seismological and geological data?

The RISE key concept and vision is to promote a paradigm shift in how earthquake risk is perceived and managed.

IMAGE is a project involving 20 partners from 9 different countries. Goal of the project is to develop an integrated geothermal exploration approach based on state-of-the-art scientific methods. Our contribution is to quantify the in-situ stress state across scales ranging from the entirety of Western Europe down to that of a single reservoir. To achieve this we analyse stress data from a wide range of stress indicators and use these to calibrate 3D geomechanical-numerical models that describe continuously the full 3D stress tensor.

Harmonize approach to stress tests for critical infrastructures against natural hazards.

The Swedish Radiation Authority (SSM ) is the Swedish regulator for the process to build a deep geological repository for high-level radioactive waste. For the selected site Forsmark we model the impact of thermal and earthquake loads on the naturally fractured crystalline rock mass surrounding the repository and their association with complex geologic structures.

The overall objective of SERA is to improve the access to data, services and research infrastructures, and deliver solutions based on innovative research and development in seismology and earthquake engineering. It aims to reduce the exposure of our society to the risk posed by natural earthquakes and induced seismic events. Our team is in charge of the development of new methods to evaluate earthquakes activities and ground-shaking models.

Our team is in charge of the development of new methods to test and validate seismic hazard models results and components.

Plans to construct hydroelectric dams in the Kyrgyz Republic and the need to assess the state of existing structures, especially with respect toearthquakes and landslides, requires structural and slope monitoring systems that provide information todecision makers in the event of emergencies. The MI-DAM project will developa robust, low-cost, and adaptable system that includes an early warning element and time-variable fragility functions.

In the course of the German change of energy policy, the mechanical requirements for underground gas storage will increase due to higher amplitude fluctuations during storage operations. For the assessment of site safety and the recommendation of suitable operating parameters, the impact of cyclic loads on the geological components of the storage facility are of key importance. We investigate of the interaction between the natural far-field stress field and the stress changes induced by the gas storage, with a the key motivation to assess the reactivation of disturbances and the resulting induced seismicity.

SECURE aims to develop versatile monitoring, characterization and modeling tools for the sustainable use of conventional and unconventional hydrocarbon reservoirs and geothermal systems. Probabilistic approaches for the description and the development of microcracks will be implemented in order to image and model the stability and integrity of different reservoir systems.

We explore the limitations of current earthquake forecast evaluation tests and develop new evaluation methods that allow for multiple forecasts to be combined into ensemble models. The resulting ensemble forecasts will be used to regularly update seismic hazard calculations, as well as evaluate current ground motion calculation methods and their concomitant parameter uncertainties.

The ultimate goal of the project is to develop, evaluate and apply a world-leading Earth system modelling infrastructure - leading into an Earth System Simulator - to provide solutions to grand challenges faced by the Earth and environmental sciences. Our contribution is to model the large scale thermo-mechanical processes that control the contemporary deformation pattern in central Western Europe on scales from 10 km 1000 km, and to link the result into a workflow of physics-based probabilistic seismic hazard assessment for low strain areas.