About Epos-France

European Plate Observing System France (Epos-France) is a national research infrastructure listed in the roadmap of research infrastructures published by the French Ministry of Higher Education and Research. The CNRS’s Institut national des sciences de l’Univers coordinates the Epos-France consortium, which comprises the majority of French universities and organizations involved in geosciences research. Around three hundred researchers, engineers and technicians work together on a daily basis to make Epos-France a formidable scientific tool at the service of the global Earth sciences community.

Epos-France integrates, within a unified, sustainable and scalable system, a wide variety of complementary observation resources in the solid Earth domain. They enable us to observe, analyze, understand and monitor the geophysical and geological manifestations of dynamic processes affecting the inner Earth on different time and space scales. At the outset, Epos-France followed the contours of the French seismological and geodetic network Résif-Epos, which it succeeded in October 2023. Since 2011, this previous national research infrastructure had been deploying instruments (seismometers, GNSS stations and gravimeters) in mainland France to measure deformations of the earth’s surface. The data collected was distributed free of charge to the global scientific community.

Résif-Epos was integrated into the European EPOS infrastructure and played an active role in its development and evolution. This is why, in autumn 2023, Résif-Epos has disappeared to make way for Epos-France, to create a new research infrastructure with a broader thematic scope in line with that of its European sister, whose aim is to advance our knowledge of the Earth system in all its diversity and complexity.

Like the former Résif-Epos infrastructure, Epos-France makes geophysical and geological data, as well as associated products and tools, freely available, both through its own national distribution channels and via the European EPOS platform. The latter provides sustainable, coordinated access to multidisciplinary European data and promotes global interoperability in the earth sciences.

Epos-France is at the heart of major societal issues, such as resource management (subsoil, water, etc.), problems associated with induced seismicity, telluric risks (earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, landslides, etc.) and natural hazards multiplied by climate change or urbanization trends. Through all its activities, Epos-France also provides support for public policies and players involved in the monitoring and management of telluric hazards and the rational use of subsoil resources.