GeoERA Raw Materials Monograph : the past and the future

ABSTRACT: GeoERA Minerals projects have produced data aimed at supporting Europe’s minerals sector and to assist the European Commission to realise its goals for raw materials. Data has been compiled on mineral occurrences and mineral provinces across Europe, in particular, areas with potential to host Critical Raw Materials. Anecdotal evidence from the minerals sector provides an indication of the likelihood of exploration leading to mine development. For every 1,000 mineral showings examined, only 100 may receive further exploration work and of those 100, only 10 may warrant more detailed sampling either through trenching, drilling or other means and of those 10 only 1 may proceed to an evaluation through a full feasibility study which itself has only 50% chance of being positive. Following this, any project for which a mine proposal is made must undergo a full evaluation and permitting by authorities including full public consultation. The proposal may or may not pass this scrutiny. In terms of a schedule, the generally accepted minimum time frame from discovery to production is 10 years and usually much more, up to 20 years.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

PanAfGeo : un programme panafricain de coopération renforcée entre services géologiques africains et européens

International audienceA National Geological Survey is responsible for providing information on the country’s underground resources and natural hazards. One of the major objectives of the Pan African training project PanAfGeo that is currently being launched will be to strengthen the competencies of African geologists in various fields of the geosciences, and notably for the governance of mineral resources. It will likewise enable a consolidation of cooperation between European and African geological surveys.Un Service géologique national a la responsabilité de fournir des informations sur les ressources du sous-sol et les risques naturels de son pays. L’un des objectifs majeurs du projet panafricain de formation PanAfGeo, en cours de lancement, sera de renforcer les compétences des géologues africains dans divers domaines des géosciences, et notamment pour la gouvernance des ressources minérales. Il permettra également de consolider la coopération entre les services géologiques européens et africains

Integrating geological data in Europe to foster multidisciplinary research

The European Plate Observing System (EPOS, www.epos-eu.org) is a multidisciplinary pan-European research infrastructure for solid Earth science. It integrates a series of domain-specific service hubs (Thematic Core Service, TCS) such as the Geological Information and Modelling, which provides access to data, data products and services on European boreholes, geological maps, mineral occurrences, mines and 3D models. TCS GIM services are hosted by a group of European Geological Surveys and a couple of national research organizations. This paper presents novel data discovery and integration, facilitated using borehole logging information with on-demand web services to produce 3D geological structures. This domain interoperability across EPOS was created for the purpose of research, but it is also highly relevant for the response to societal grand challenges such as natural hazards and climate change. European and international interoperability implementation frameworks are well described and used (e.g., INSPIRE, ISO, OGC, and IUGS/CGI). It can be difficult for data providers to deploy web services that support the full semantic data definition (e.g., OGC Complex Feature) to expose several millions of geological entities through web-enabled data portals as required by pan-European projects. The TCS GIM group implemented and innovatively extended two standardized descriptions, i.e. GeoSciML-Lite and EarthResourceML-Lite, with an important reuse of content from Linked Data Registries. This approach was applied to design and implement the European Borehole Index and associated web services (View-WMS and Discovery-WFS), extended to 3D models, geological maps as well as mineral occurrences and mines. Results presented here apply the Linked Data approach ensuring optimal semantic description and enriching the data graphs, with complex descriptions and contents. In this way, it is now possible to traverse from one Borehole Index instance to linked richer information such as the borehole geological log, groundwater levels, rock sample description, analyses, etc. All this detailed information is served following international interoperability standards (Observations & Measurements, GroundWaterML 2.0, GeoSciML4, amongst others)