Modern research programs in Earth Sciences at European as well as international level are challenged by an increasing requirement for inter- and trans-disciplinarity, societal relevance, and educational outreach as well as market oriented applications. Projects and project managers need to adapt their strategies to these new demands and incorporate innovative, yet sound and coherent, project management practices. As key contact points of often large collaborative research programs, it is indispensable for project managers to have a credible forum with which to coherently exchange ideas on relevant practices and methodologies, learn about new developments on funder policies related to the science-society interface, and discuss how to enhance the project outcomes and impact. A close dialogue among research project managers and with key stakeholders is mandatory in order to ensure the effective use of the project results for higher societal impact and public awareness.

The session aims to bring together project managers from Europe and beyond, on an interactive discussion platform for 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 projects and proposals.

This session is directed at project managers, coordinators, researchers, and project management practitioners 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 and beyond, encouraging in particular those working with transdisciplinary projects where research meets the public, industry, and policy makers. Contributions are invited on a wide range of topics including, but not limited to, those addressing the following questions:

• How to design a project structure to optimise project implementation and impact?
• What are “best practices” in coordinating large international consortia?
• How can we maintain continuity of project management expertise with project managers mostly employed on non-permanent contracts?
• Which local, national and international networks of EU project managers exist, and are they useful?
• How to identify organisational pitfalls?
• How to deal with the project partners’ different priorities, e.g., interdisciplinary and academic-private sector?
• How to effectively engage non-research stakeholders to optimise project contributions?
• What project management concepts/procedures can be transferred from other sectors (e.g., industry) or social sciences (e.g., economics) to Earth sciences?
• What are the best tools for transferring knowledge from research to the private sector, decision makers, and the public in general?
• How can project results and impact be effectively disseminated to the wider community and how can their importance be highlighted to funding agencies?
• What lessons can be learned from “failed” projects?

Citizen science (the involvement of the public in scientific processes) is gaining momentum in one discipline after another, thereby more and more data on biodiversity, earthquakes, weather, climate, health issues among others are being collected at different scales that can extend the frontiers of knowledge. Successful citizen observatories can potentially be scaled up in order to contribute to larger environmental and policy strategies and actions (such as the European Earth Observation monitoring systems) and to be integrated in GEOSS and Copernicus. Making credible contributions to science can empower citizens to actively participate in environmental decision making, can raise awareness about environmental issues and can help bridge the science-society gap. Often, citizen science is seen in the context of Open Science, which is a broad movement embracing Open Data, Open Access, Open Educational Resources, Open Source, Open Methodology, and Open Peer Review to transparently publish and share scientific research - thus leveraging Citizen Science and Reproducible Research.

Both, open science in general and citizen science in particular, pose great challenges for researchers, and to support the goals of the various openness initiatives, this session looks at what is possible nowadays and what is ready for application in geosciences. Success stories, failures, best practices and solutions will be presented, in addition to various related networks. We aim to show how researchers, citizens, funding agencies, governments and other stakeholders can benefit from citizen science and open science, acknowledging the drawbacks and highlighting the opportunities available for geoscientists.

In this session, we are looking for successful approaches of working with citizen science and open science to bridge the gap between a multitude of stakeholders in research, policy, economy, practice and society at large by finding emerging environmental issues and empowering citizens. This session shall be an open space to exchange experiences and to present either successful examples or failed efforts. Learning from others and understanding what to adopt and what to change help the participants in their own undertakings and new initiatives, so that they become future success stories.

We want to ask and find answers to the following questions:
Which approaches can be used in Earth, Planetary and Space Sciences?
What are the biggest challenges and how to overcome them?
What kind of citizen scientist involvement and open science strategies exist?
How to ensure transparency in project results and analyses?
How to evaluate successful bridging of the science-society-gap?

Geoscience witnessed a flurry of major breakthroughs in the 19th and 20th century, leading to major shifts in our understanding of the Earth system. Such breakthroughs included new concepts, such as plate tectonics and sequence stratigraphy, and new techniques, like radiometric dating and remote sensing. However, the pace of these discoveries has declined, raising the question of whether we have now made all of the key geoscience breakthroughs. Put another way, have we reached “Peak Geoscience” and are we now in a time of synthesis, incremental development and consolidation? Or are there new breakthroughs on the horizon? If so what will these developments be?

One key remaining challenge is the management of the inherent uncertainties in geoscience. Despite the importance of understanding uncertainty, it is often neglected by interpreters, geomodellers and experimentalists. With ever-more powerful computers and the advent of big data analytics and machine learning, our ability to quantify uncertainty in geological interpretation, models and experiments will be crucial.

This session aims to bring together those with an interest in the future of geoscience. We welcome contributions from any field of geoscience which either demonstrate a new, disruptive geoscience breakthrough or provide insights into where the next breakthrough will come. We encourage contributions associated with uncertainty in geoscience models and data, machine learning or big data analytics.