Geoscience for Society: Knowledge transfer and collaborative research management

Luisa Cristini – National Oceanography Centre, Southampton, UK
Sylvia Walter – Utrecht University, Utrecht, Netherlands
Anja Reitz – GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel, Germany
Michele Barbier – Ocean Synergies, Nice, France
Daniela Henkel – GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel, Germany
Sofia Alexiou – National Oceanography Centre, Southampton, UK
Ivo Grigorov – Technical University of Denmark, Copenhagen, Denmark

Beyond contributing to our understanding of how the Earth system works, geosciences research provides an important service to most of today’s societal challenges: from food and energy security, from renewable energies to natural resources management and ecosystem services, from climate adaptation and mitigation to natural hazards and disaster risk reduction.
Transfer of knowledge across the science-society interface is becoming essential both for ethical and economic reasons. Therefore, projects and project managers need innovative knowledge transfer strategies that also rely on sound and coherent project management practices. As key contact points of often large collaborative research programs, project managers in geosciences however still lack a credible forum to coherently exchange project management methodologies, learn about new developments on funder policies related to the science-society interface, and discuss how to enhance the project outcomes and impact.
Transfer of knowledge among research project managers and with knowledge users fosters a more effective use of the project results for higher societal impact and public awareness. This session aims to bring together project managers in geosciences around Europe and beyond, and to update them on the range of national and international funding instruments by exchanging knowledge, experience and best practices for effective project management. Moreover, the session is also an opportunity for researchers to gain knowledge for the administrative part of proposals.
The session is directed to project managers, coordinators, scientists and students in general who are keen to exchange experiences and increase their expertise through interaction with the European project management community. We invite contributions from all EGU scientific divisions encouraging in particular those dealing with intersections between research themes and with public, industry and governmental entities.
Case studies are welcome from any stage of the research project lifecycle, from project design and proposal to project implementation and evaluation. However, contributions will need to draw transferable conclusions and recommendations applicable to the majority of disciplines covered by the EGU Forum.

Contributions are invited on a wide range of topics including, but not limited to, those addressing the following questions:
1. How to design a project structure to optimize project implementation and impact?
2. What are “best practices” in coordinating large international consortia?
3. How to efficiently carry out specific tasks within the project assigned to project managers, e.g., cost-benefit analysis, communication and outreach, event management.
4. How to deal with the project partners’ different priorities, e.g., inter-disciplinary and academic-private sector?
5. How to effectively engage non-research stakeholders to optimize project contributions?
6. What project management concepts and/or systems can be transferred from other sectors (e.g., industry) or social sciences (e.g., economics) to geosciences?
7. What are the best tools for transferring knowledge from research to the private sector, decision makers and the public in general?
8. How can project results and products be effectively disseminated to the wider community and how can their importance be highlighted to funding agencies?
9. How to measure the impact of effective knowledge transfer to likely end-users/beneficiaries of new knowledge?
10. What lessons can be learned from “failed” projects?

This session is twinned with session "Geoscience for Society - Cross-cutting Experiences"