Europe needs URGENT solutions to decarbonize its heating sector. Geothermal energy can play a prominent role in this transition, providing heat in urban areas as an alternative to fossil fuels. However, its growth is hampered by the limited knowledge about the resources and risks in these challenging environments. Existing exploration methods are not suited for reservoir characterization in urban contexts. The URGENT project addresses this gap by providing sustainable and affordable solutions for urban seismic exploration of geothermal resources. Low-impact innovative technologies, consisting of an electric seismic source and novel MEMS based sensors integrated into autonomous nodes, will be designed, built, and tested on 3 sites: Balmatt (BE), Konin (PL), Batta (HU). They will enable high-quality data recording including low frequency signals resulting in high resolution imaging up to 4000m of depth. Ultimately, improved reservoir characterization will reduce the geological uncertainties and contribute to increase drilling success rate by 20%. Also, by optimizing survey design, including compressive sensing and simultaneous shooting, URGENT eventually aims at reducing exploration costs by 30%. For more efficient analysis of the acquired data, AI & ML methods will be developed and tested to assist and automate fault and fracture detection. Structural models including these features will be the basis for geomechanical modelling to assess fault reactivation and the corresponding seismic risk. In addition, ML techniques used in the O&G sector will be updated and combined with THM reservoir modelling to optimize the location and design of wells, maximizing heat extraction while minimizing seismic risk leading to increase plant lifetime up to 40 years and higher revenue. URGENT will contribute to accelerate the deployment of urban geothermal projects through exploration workflows suited for these environments, market uptake analysis and reinforced community acceptance.

Smart Exploration consists of a research and application team supported by a group of technologically advanced SMEs and the mining industry. The consortium will firstly focus on developing cost-effective, environmentally-friendly tools and methods for geophysical exploration in highly challenging brownfield areas where exploration expenditure is greater and the return time (from exploration to production) shorter. A second focus point will be long-term greenfield exploration with the aim of reducing exploration costs, implying significant improvement in development rates and a sustainable supply of raw materials at the same rate as the whole world wishes to grow. Therefore, new innovative ideas will also be tested for greenfield exploration to increase the potential of finding new major deposits of relevance to the EU. The overall objectives of the tasks are to develop (1) cost-effective and innovative exploration instruments comprising airborne, surface, downhole and in-mine modular-based geophysical systems, (2) new exploration targets through multidisciplinary and integrated approaches, (3) novel reprocessing and handling of legacy exploration data that will generate additional information and targets for detailed exploration, and (4) validating all these developments, to maximize their impacts, at relevant exploration sites covering greenfield, near-mine and in-mine areas using known targets. We anticipate that these developments will not only generate new technological and methodological markets for the EU, but will also result in improved exploration strategies in the EU and beyond. The nature of the consortium, the partners involved, and the commodities that are considered will result in highly useful exploitation of the developments envisaged in the project and a guarantee of their successful use beyond the project life.