Keele University is one of the only UK partner institutions of a €31 million pan-European research infrastructure project - The European Plate Observing System (EPOS) - which facilitates integrated use of data, data products, and facilities from distributed research infrastructures for solid Earth science in Europe.

The EPOS project has now been granted the legal status of a European Research Infrastructure Consortium (ERIC) by the European Commission. By linking hundreds of individual research infrastructures located in the European countries, the EPOS ERIC will provide open access to a huge pool of integrated data, analysis tools and facilities for researchers worldwide.

Early in May Keele academics from the School of Geography, Geology and the Environment, Dr Ian Stimpson and Dr Glenda Jones joined other members of the EPOS Anthropogenic Hazards team in Pisa, Italy at a meeting where Dr Jones delivered two talks.

At the meeting, it was announced that Keele has signed the Anthropogenic Hazards Consortium Agreement to take the project into its operational phase as part of a sustainable ERIC.

Dr Jones said: “Keele is playing a significant role in the EPOS project to make geoscience data openly accessible together with the tools to analyse it. We are part of a Europe-wide community actively working to help current and future generations address the grand challenges associated with geological hazards and the exploitation of resources.”

EPOS Anthropogenic Hazards provides facilities, data and reference material on the online research platform Induced Seismicity-European Plate Observing System, funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme, to aid research into anthropogenic hazards related to the exploration and exploitation of geo-resources.