World Heat Flow Database Project

• Applicants: Dr. Kirsten Elger; Dr. Sven Fuchs; Dr.-Ing. Stephan Mäs
• Subject Area: Geophysics
• Term: since 2021
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 491795283

The aim of the World Heat Flow Database project is to develop a new research data infrastructure for terrestrial surface heat flow. Precise knowledge of heat flow is fundamental (i) to describe the Earth’s thermal field, (ii) to decipher plate-tectonic and geodynamic processes and (iii) to understand the behaviour of natural or artificial utilized geological thermal systems –across all spatial scales and timely domains. The quality of available heat-flow data is heterogeneous and the associated databases on national and international level are in general of undocumented quality and poor usability. However, without reliable heat-flow data, the majority of scientific thermal analyses and industrial utilizations of the underground are lacking an indispensable input and modelling control parameter. To overcome these limitations, we will develop a heat-flow research data infrastructure that offers a standalone reference and one-stop shop for comprehensive information on heat-flow related data, publications, projects, and researchers. This new user-oriented web service will offer quality proofed, up-to-date, well-documented, extended, enriched and restructured heat-flow data to the geoscientific community. The proposed project will establish for the first time a German heat-flow data infrastructure, which shall become the nucleus for a worldwide implementation of a new global heat-flow research-data infrastructure. The new database will reflect criteria of FAIR and OPEN data policy. For the overall use of the community, we will support the interoperability with other geoscientific data services (e.g. EPOS). Core elements are connecting to, providing (and including) globally used persistent identifiers: (i) DOI for heat-flow data newly submitted to the database, (ii) ORCID IDs to uniquely identify authors and (iii) International Geo Sample Numbers (IGSN) for connecting data and literature with physical samples the data were measured from. To fill the new database with curated quality-proven heat-flow data, the available reconnaissance data will be reviewed by global heat-flow experts in a unique international collaborative revision approach supported by the International Heat Flow Commission (IHFC). With already committed colleagues from all continents (n = 66), up to 60% of the currently available heat-flow data will be revised within the 3 years of project time. After the initial project funding, the new research infrastructure will be continuously operated as permanent service by the GFZ Potsdam.Overall, the World Heat Flow Database project will define the next level of research geo-data infrastructure enabling the geo-community to dig deep into Earth thermal processes worldwide and to get new insights for exploring and understanding the Earth’s crust thermal field.

• DFG Programme: Research data and software (Scientific Library Services and Information Systems)