In July 2019, the “Development of research infrastructure for the international competitiveness of the Slovenian RRI space – RI-SI-EPOS” project was granted by the Slovenian Ministry of Education, Science and Sport and EC - European Regional Development Fund for the four partners (ZRC SAZU - the leading partner, GeoZS, ULFGG, IJS) from EPOS Slovenia consortium to build a national network for the collection, editing, design, storage of solid Earth data in the field of seismology, geology, geodesy, and near fault observatories (NFO).

With the help of the new research equipment from the RI-SI-EPOS project ( https://epos-ip.zrc-sazu.si/ri-si-epos/), the Slovenian partners are now collecting a large amount of research data in digital form, which part will be also included in the national Karst database at ZRC SAZU, harmonized with FAIR principles and designed to provide a temporal and spatial link between specific sites.

The EPOS Slovenia Data Center has also been established and consists of very powerful servers and computer units. Although it is still in an early stage of development, the current functionality of EPOS Slovenia Data Center is beginning to collect the various large datasets obtained with the new instruments and catalog their metadata within a GeoNetwork portal to build a standardized database with system management and user interface for data mining and access to data products. The architecture of the new data center proposes to replicate the functionality and standards of EPOS ERIC to be compliant with FAIR data principles and data lifecycle. Data collected by RI-SI-EPOS's equipment will support the development of data and services planned and/or already developed and operating within the EPOS Slovenia consortium.

In addition, EPOS Slovenia is now providing new seismological research measurements and observations leading to scientific publications, as well as new datasets curated from the RI-SI-EPOS stations 2021 network. Due to new research equipment, a Near Fault Observatory site in Slovenia was proposed. A short presentation of the Slovenian NFO site together with its capabilities you can watch here: https://epos-ip.zrc-sazu.si/media/ .

The RI-SI-EPOS project has also enriched the international research infrastructure EPOS ERIC with new research opportunities and incentives. The project has contributed to (1) long-term and qualitative monitoring and assessment of geophysical, geological and geochemical processes in the solid Earth and the atmosphere, (2) contributing to a better understanding of events in nature and their interactions, (3) densification of the network of observational sensors (in the fields of seismology, geodesy, geology), (4) modernize and upgrade existing instruments for all areas of partnership monitoring, and (5) strategically integrate research capacities into a complementary whole that will ensure research excellence in the national and international space. A national hub of distributed solid earth research data centers will be organized at individual national partners. The RI-SI-EPOS project was successfully completed on 31 August 2021.

The application for RI-SI-EPOS project was possible because Slovenia was one of the founding countries of EPOS ERIC in 2018. The project was a concrete added value for the participation of Slovenian partners in the EPOS community since 2010.

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