Hosting Institution:

Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule Zürich (ETHZ), Switzerland

Description:

The Bedretto Underground Laboratory for Geosciences and Geoenergies (BedrettoLab) is a unique meso-scale infrastructure ideal for hypothesis driven and fundamental research as well as for cutting-edge technology demonstrations. Its mission is to advance transdisciplinary research in geo-energy applications and in frontier geoscience research.

The BedrettoLab offers access to the following testbeds:

1. Geothermal testbed – For the development of large-scale deep reservoirs for water circulation, storage and extraction of geothermal energy. It features multiple stimulation and monitoring boreholes instrumented with fiber-optics, seismic and hydraulic sensors.
2. Earthquake Physics testbed – It consists of multiple boreholes to monitor a large seismogenic fault. It features a side tunnel and multiple boreholes to monitor the fault during experimentation using, for example, high-resolution acoustic emission sensors.
3. Deep Life Observatory (DELOS) to study organisms living at the energy limit of life throughout the Bedretto tunnel.

Services currently offered by the infrastructure:

The BedrettoLab offers the possibility to perform cutting-edge experiments by means of plugging new sensors to the existing infrastructure, testing novel data acquisition techniques and stimulation protocols, as well as setting up dedicated experiments on geochemistry, geology, geophysics, and hydrogeology in all testbeds.

The BedrettoLab also offers Virtual Accesses to data archives and computational models of ongoing and past experiments, collected by sensor arrays and fiber optic cables (DAS, DSS, DTS, pressure, geochemistry, SIMFIP, etc.), as well as structural and geological characterization models.

Data acquired during Transnational Accesses will be made available via the geoenergy testbeds community of the EPOS Multi-Scale Laboratories.

Modality of access:

For Transnational Access, the planned unit access for the facility is “one week”; up to two grants can be offered for one or several people. Remote access is possible, for instance, by providing access to real-time data flows from specific sensors during experiments. Transnational Access to the testbeds can be granted in a collaborative manner with other experiments. Therefore, data and infrastructure from different fields of research and development of the different partners can mutually benefit from each other.

Support:

Technical management of the instruments (e.g., DAS, DSS, DTS system) to allow remote access, control and data collection, technical support for the installation, and logistic support.

Further information:

www.bedrettolab.ethz.ch/en/home/

8th Geo-INQUIRE online Seminar: Geo-INQUIRE Transnational Access at BedrettoLab Testbed

Contact person: 

Liliana Vargas Meleza (liliana.vargaseaps.ethz.ch)