Scientific evaluation of programme area 5 Nature and Climate (2005-2013) at the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland (GEUS)

The program area 5 Nature and Climate was established several years ago based on strategic and organizational considerations by GEUS. The net appropriation/ core funding from GEUS has varied from 12.0 to 18.8 mill DKK annually during the 2005-2012 evaluation period, with the total revenue varying from 22.7 to 45.6 mill DKK/year. There has been a clear tendency for increasing income during the last 2 years of the evaluation period. The external funding has been higher than 50 % since 2008, varying from 55 to 65 % of the total income during the period 2008-2012. Between 2002 and 2012, 30 to 50 employees, financed by core and third party funding, have been assigned to the program.

Unfortunately the evaluation conditions were not perfect; see the part on Evaluation details for more information on this. However, the evaluation panel conducted detailed personal interviews and discussions with 20 staff members, including the main responsible for this programme area, deputy managing director Bjørn K. Jensen, two department heads, scientists, technical staff and a PhD student. In addition all research professors working in this programme area were interviewed. This evaluation is therefore based on observations made during the site visit to GEUS, and the written revised material that was received after the site visit.

The deputy managing director, who is in charge of programme area 5, identified for us, that this is a rather mixed area. This is also what the panel observed as the overall challenge for this programme area 5. It would be a clear advantage for GEUS to give more attention to developing this programme area Nature and Climate in a coherent way, by establishing strong and clear collaborations between projects that naturally contain scientific topics which go across the involved departments. This would demand much more coordination and cooperation between the different sub-groups, but it would also provide the basis for developing new interdisciplinary close collaborations, which can move science significantly forward. GEUS certainly has the potential to do so within programme area 5 with the generally high scientific level.