The Stock-en-socle project aims at acquiring the necessary knowledge for the periodic storage of sensitive heat in hardrock aquifers characterized by their low permeability. Though geothermal energy storage boreholes remain the only existing solutions proposed in a low-permeability environment, Stock-en-socle examines the possibilities of heat storage through semi-open circulation of water in a well. This is, typically, a SCW (Standing Column Well) and takes advantage of the strong heterogeneity of hardrock aquifers, targeting zones that are the least favorable for water-resource exploitation. The main identified scientific problems facing the project concern the minimum level of permeability required around the well and its evolution with time (increase and decrease) through water-rock interaction processes. A scientific and technical program, including modeling and experimental laboratory and fieldwork, will study the thermal, hydraulic and geochemical processes involved. The study area for field tests, located in French Brittany, will test different geological settings (granite, gneiss and schist). Tracer tests and a long-term circulation test by injection of warm water within a single well (push-pull), will be carried out. Hydrothermal modeling will study the effects of permeability structures on the capacity of storage and recovery of thermal energy, while reactive-transfer modeling will simulate the evolution of permeability under the impact of dissolution and precipitation reactions. Based on the obtained results, technical solutions will be studied for drilling and equipping an SCW well in a low-permeability context. This work will be completed by a technical/economic feasibility study for proposing an investment and operations model. The end result will be description of the suitability of heat storage in SCW well connected to a small heat-distribution network. To reach the defined goals, Stock-en-Socle will be based on a public/private partnership with two public institutions devoted to research activities, a university and a public establishment with an industrial and commercial character, and two private companies working in the field of geothermal energy and soil technology. In addition to the dissemination of its results to the scientific community, Stock-en-socle will identify the possibilities for further work as part of the project, in terms of setting up an industrial research project to be implemented in Brittany.

Up to recent time, underground has been investigated mainly for its non-renewable natural resources neglecting its huge potential for storage and geothermal capability. A full energetic transition from traditional hydrocarbon resources to carbon free energy needs smart and safe underground use. In addition to being a source of geothermal energy, the subsurface is a vast 3D space that can be used in a carefully planned way for the management of carbon-free energies through the geological storage of CO2 and various other forms of energy vectors (e.g., H2, heat, compressed air). For a safe and efficient exploitation of all natural resources (e.g., geothermal energy, hydrocarbon, minerals) or underground storage, one critical effort is to identify, characterize, and monitor natural clayey cap rock overlying a target (resource reservoir or storage volume), which plays an essential role in risk reduction (e.g., water table contamination, substances upward leakage) due to their low permeability. Characterization of clayey rocks is thus a key issue in this context. Focusing on this geological formation allows reducing a great part of geotechnologies issues. The identification, characterization, and monitoring of the mineralogy and permeability of the clayey rocks is classically done using boreholes geological, geochemical and geophysical measurements. Despite having a high accuracy, boreholes measurements are invasive and can only bring punctual information at high cost. Surface-based geophysical tools, and especially electrical and electromagnetic (EM) methods (i.e. electric and/or magnetic field measurements), can provide additional information between boreholes at a significantly lower cost and repeatable in time. Interpretation of EM measurements is usually performed using only the direct current (DC) electrical resistivity, which yields to equivalency, sensitivity, and spatial resolution problems. These problems limit the method ability to identify different compartments and therefore generate interpretation difficulties. Using EM measurements and complex resistivity will improve the reliability and accuracy of the interpretation. But, this improvement requires high level of instrumental, theoretical and modeling developments at different scales, in particular for clayey rocks, as these rocks have a typical complex electrical signature associated with their strong surface electrical properties which is function of the clay mineralogy. The main objective of the project is to improve the characterization of the complex and frequency dependence of electrical properties of different clays minerals and mixtures. For that purpose, we intend to closely combine measurements, modeling and inversion tools at different scales (from nano to pluri-m) in parallel to instrumental development. This work will require the development of upscaling procedures, from the mineral/water interface (nano/micrometric) to the field scale (decametric to kilometric). Laboratory experiments using Spectral Induced Polarization (SIP) and multi-scale simulations will be conducted in order to validate the upscaling relationships developed theoretically. These models will be included in an existing inversion code in order to characterize the complex electrical conductivity (chargeability) more precisely after inversion. In parallel, we aim at improving the reliability of EM imaging at depth based on Controlled Source EM (CSEM) by resolving the surface heterogeneities “static” effects which often deteriorates the imaging capabilities deeper. We will develop a new prototype of EM Induction device (EMI) in order to image densely over large zone the shallow earth (from deca to hectometers). This project will help to push further the use of geophysical methods for the characterization of clayey cap rocks.

Faced with increasingly numerous, complex and non-standard crises, putting the populations under hazardous situations and vital issues, public and private organizations face a major challenge: "How to optimize decision-making under uncertainty and how to anticipate the reconstruction and restoration of a territory?” On the basis of the last cyclonic season in the Caribbean, the APRIL project will put into perspective the impact of hot decisions, based on evolving and partial knowledge, on the maintenance of the resilience of the territory in the short term (“urgency resilience”) and the medium term (“territory recovery”). Particular emphasis will be placed on anticipation and decision making under uncertainties related to meteorological forecasts, socio-economic dimensions of the territory (vital networks, insurance context, legal, economic context, precarious populations, insularity, etc.). All levels of the ORSEC plan will be considered from the town to the interministerial level. APRIL will pursue two major goals: - Capitalize the experience of IRMA, MARIA and JOSE on the basis of surveys to provide practical recommendations and methodologies to implement a short-term (emergency) and medium / long-term (reconstruction of territory) for future extraordinary events and improve ORSEC planning; - Create decision support tools (Decision support system and representation of decision parameters via heuristic mapping) that assess the various components of a territory's vulnerability, uncertainties and anticipate cross-cutting protection and remediation measures to maximize the short- and medium-term resilience of the territory. Beyond its "research and development" components, APRIL proposes to implement, as soon as the project is implemented, a transfer of results to civil security and crisis management actors. A table exercice of the current staff will be organized at the end of the project and will notably enable to test the proposed anticipation method. More generally, the results of the APRIL project will be widely disseminated to the various training institutions of the State's executives and made available to the public authorities through the advisory committee made up of professionals from civil security and crisis management. This committee will ensure that the research conducted in the APRIL project responds to operational issues and finds an echo in the implementation of concrete measures and the evolution of doctrines. APRIL is a research-action project and is positioned as such in a framework of experimental development.

Laterites are deep weathering covers of the critical zone that occupy 80% of the total soil-mantle volume of the Earth’s landscape and significantly participate to the global geochemical budget of weathering and erosion, and greenhouse gas consumption. Despite their factual importance on Earth surface, the timing of their formation and evolution in response to climatic and geodynamic forcing are still obscure. RECA project will address both the topics of "Functioning and evolution of climate, oceans and major cycles" and "Continental Surfaces: critical zone and biosphere" from ANR Axis 1 – Challenge 1., by reconstructing the influence of climate change laterites formation. The originality of the RECA project is to combine chronometric, weathering and climatic proxies developed in the recent years in order to build a comprehensive and predictive scenario of laterite formation and evolution. We will concentrate our effort on geodynamically stable Guyana Shield and Central Amazonia regions, where laterites formed through the whole Cenozoic and can be associated with major geomorphological units. This ambitious multidisciplinary project proposes, for the first time, to perform absolute dating of lateritic duricrusts associated to five episodes of planation in the South American subcontinent. We will date mineralogically well-identified populations of iron oxides and oxyhydroxides (hematite, goethite) and clays (kaolinites) by using (U-Th)/He, (U-Th)/Ne and electron paramagnetic resonance spectroscopy, respectively. These recent methods are appropriates because they can be applied to the most common secondary minerals found in laterites and span geological time scales. The inherent complexity of weathering materials, which may contain different populations of a same secondary mineral related to distinct stages of lateritization will be taken into account. The timing of duricrust formation will then be related to paleoclimatic conditions (temperature, rainfall) derived from a combination of geochemical or mineralogical indices and proxies: (i) at global scale, through, e.g., the known continental drainage curves; (ii) at a more regional scale through the intensity of weathering, the ratio hematite/goethite or O and H isotope systems of kaolinite and iron oxides and oxyhydroxides. A second task will associate non-conventional Li, Si and Fe isotopic methods that will help to decipher the evolution of weathering processes linked to the various stages of laterite formation. Coupling weathering budget and the ages of weathering profiles will yield average weathering and erosion rates, allowing comparison with other weathering environments or paleo-environments at the Earth surface. To tackle this ambitious task, the RECA project gathers an international consortium made of skilled researchers in the identification of lateritic soils, dating methods, environmental mineralogy; "traditional" and "non-traditional" stable isotope geochemistry, and modeling approaches of the formation of weathering profiles. The synergy of the identified teams offers the highest level of guarantee to lift off the identified scientific and technical barriers, giving access to yet hidden information on soil formation as a response to climate change through geological times.

The main objective of the SMART-Control project is to reduce the risks in the application of sustainable groundwater management techniques worldwide through the development and implementation of an innovative web-based, real-time monitoring and control system (RMCS) in combination with risk assessment and management tools. Managed aquifer recharge (MAR) represents an efficient water reuse technique to restore groundwater-dependent ecosystem services. Despite its wide benefits, the contribution of MAR to safe water supply at global scale is still limited. The reasons include lack of data on MAR technological costs, hydrogeological site-specific characteristics, the associated risks with operational challenges and the lack of national regulations. The lack of detailed and up-to-date monitoring data hinders the reliable setup and calibration of numerical models for risk assessment in nature-based systems such as MAR facilities. The implementation of RMCS will not only enable the assessment and management of risks at MAR sites but also decrease the uncertainties in numerical models. The SMART-Control framework consists of a cloud-based monitoring and modelling framework for real-time groundwater management where time series data collected from sensor networks installed at selected MAR sites will be remotely transferred and automatically fed into real-time simulation-optimization algorithms. The proposed system will include three main components: 1) in-situ real-time monitoring system consisting of sensors installed on-site coupled with pre-processing algorithms; 2) web-based modelling and monitoring platform including automated optimization and control algorithms, model update tool to incorporate real-time data into numerical flow and transport models and a prediction tool to involve climate change and water demand scenarios and 3) a set of risk assessment and management tools to evaluate MAR-associated risks. This smart innovative framework for MAR (SMART-Control) will allow for real-time control and risk assessment of MAR facilities at any stage of development so that implementation, management and operational capabilities are improved. In addition, the development of risk assessment guidelines for the application of MAR ensures that the implementation of the solution is supported by a legal framework. The approach will be tested at six MAR sites (pilot to full-scale) in Germany, France, Brazil and Cyprus. Each case study represents a different MAR setting in terms of infiltration method, boundary conditions, objectives, quality and quantity of recharged and recovered water, operational scheme, as well as technical and ecological constraints. The variety of case studies ensures that the SMART-Control framework can be applied to various environmental and operational conditions to promote and improve the integrated water resources management techniques. In addition, a cost-benefit analysis will study the benefits of SMART-Control and vast training activities will ensure its dissemination. The approach will bring real-time evidence that despite MAR is a nature-based solution, risks associated with the implementation and operation can be managed and controlled and demonstrates that it is a safe and reliable technique for integrated water resources management. The international consortium consists of nine full partners comprised of four universities, three research institutes and two companies. Additionally, associated partners involving water works, water managers and stakeholders in the participating countries support the project and benefit directly from the project outcomes.