EPOS-BE

The European Plate Observing System (EPOS) is the first and only pan-European research infrastructure for solid Earth science, integrating and harmonizing data and services that are scattered across national data centers with different data formats and processing procedures. The main innovative aspect of EPOS is its Central Data Portal, which offers a multidisciplinary research platform that provides freely-accessible harmonized and quality-controlled data and services from different disciplines in solid Earth science. More information on the architecture of the EPOS framework can be found here.

EPOS' integrated datasets facilitate and stimulate the progress of open science research to better understand Earth system dynamics, e.g. physical processes controlling earthquakes, volcanoes, tsunamis, etc. This federated system allows researchers unprecedented opportunities to use and analyze multidisciplinary solid Earth science data, detect new signals in complex datasets and lay the ground for widespread application of advanced data analysis methods in the Earth sciences. As such, EPOS drives innovation to help researchers and national governments to help tackle current and future societal issues, e.g. the mitigation of natural hazards, the sustainable management of georesources (raw materials, water and energy), etc.

The EPOS lifecycle started over twenty years ago and went through subsequent Conception, Preparatory, Implementation and Pilot Operational Phases. In 2008, EPOS was included in the Roadmap of the European Strategy Forum on Research Infrastructures (ESFRI). EPOS established the European Research Infrastructure Consortium (ERIC) in 2018, with Belgium as one of its founding members. The ERIC legal framework provides EPOS with legal personality and capacity recognized in all EU Member States. EPOS ERIC provides operational services since the launch of the EPOS Data Portal at EGU 2023 (General Assembly of the European Geosciences Union, April 2023).