Work performed
◾ The GeoERA Stage One Call for Ideas opened then on April 4th until June 7th 2017. 61 Project Ideas were submitted. The Call was promoted though newsletters and other channels.
◾Based on this input, the scientific scope of Stage Two Call for Proposals was developed as 16 Specific Research Topic (SRT) covering a specified issue within each Theme. The GeoERA Stage Two Call for Proposals opened on 17 October 2017. This call closed on the 12th of January 2018. 17 proposals were submitted.
◾Review and evaluation: The proposals have been checked on eligibility and experts where selected for the technical review and the Expert Panel meeting. The Expert Panel met on the 21th of March 2018 to evaluate the 17 proposals. They delivered a ranking list of highest quality proposals. All projects have been evaluated above the threshold.
◾End of March 2018, 14 projects where selected for funding by the Executive Board, and a 15th project was proposed with a lower EC funding rate. The General Assembly approved the 15 projects for funding on the 9th of April 2018. The project partners kicked-off in July 2018.
◾In the period from July 2018 to October 2021, all 15 projects were implemented.
◾Important events were: midterm project reviews in February 2020, midterm conference November 2020 (online instead of live in Ljubljana due to COVID-19 pandemic), final project review sessions end of 2021, final conference in January 2022.
◾On 31 October 2021, 14 out of the 15 projects were concluded. One project ended 30 June 2021.
Main results
The implementation of the selected projects has delivered the following results:
◾47 national and regional GSO’s from 32 countries joined forces and pooled € 21 million from their own resources with € 10 million from the EC;
◾The programme organized a call for proposals, in which 15 research projects in the domains of Geo-Energy (6), Groundwater (4), Raw Materials (4) and Information management (1) were selected and carried out;
◾Common assessment frameworks and methodologies supporting better understanding and management of the water-energy-raw materials nexus and potential impacts and risks of subsurface use;
◾A geological knowledge base consisting of objective and seamless data, information and expertise to service European, national and regional policy makers, industry and other stakeholders and facilitate them in policy and decision-making processes;
◾The projects delivered a vast number of reports, datasets, maps and models, best practices and guidelines and other results, that to a large extent are published through a common European Geological Data Infrastructure (EGDI) and available for anyone to use.
◾The projects were subject to four levels of evaluation. The average assessment score was 4,4 (from 5) and all four evaluation levels agree that achievements surpassed initial expectations. As a result the GeoERA Programme as a whole is overachieved.
Dissemination and exploitation
◾The overarching goal of dissemination was to actively engage with specific stakeholder groups: policy makers, geoscientific communities, industry, and other interested parties or the general public, in order to integrate different views and assess the different needs. Each of the projects engaged with specific targeted stakeholder groups, in order to ensure appropriate scope and uptake of the project results. Communication actions consisted of the development of a visual identity, website, newsletters, info-materials and engagement in social media. Dissemination was facilitated by the easy-to-use Information Platform EGDI.
◾All outreach targets set at the start of the programme (e.g. nr. of web visits, publications, leaflets, social media posts and reads) where far exceeded, in some cases by an order of magnitude;
