Michèle Rousseau, the BRGM's Chair and Executive Director, and Loïc Voisin, Director for Innovation, Marketing and Industrial Performance at Suez, signed an agreement between their two organisations on 27 June in Paris.
© Suez
The agreement signed on 27 June 2019 by Michèle Rousseau, the BRGM's Chair and Executive Director, and Loïc Voisin, Director for Innovation, Marketing and Industrial Performance at Suez, aims to strengthen R&D cooperation on water and the environment on a lasting basis.
Cooperation in seven priority areas of development
This 3-year agreement aims to launch joint R&D projects and develop new applications, products and concepts.
As one of the Carnot Institutes established to encourage scientific research partnerships with businesses, the BRGM, as the French geological survey organisation, will be assisting Suez, a world leader in environmental services, in developing its activities in the following topic areas:
- Groundwater resources;
- Water treatment;
- Metrology;
- Emerging pollutants;
- Geothermal energy and energy storage;
- Polluted sites, soils and sediments;
- Rehabilitation and environment at mining sites across the world.
Joint BRGM-Suez projects now under way
AGREGE aims to economise natural resources used in urban development (topsoil, peat, aggregates, etc.) and to develop urban waste recycling sectors. This project involves local SMEs working with the BRGM and Suez.
MAREA is a European transboundary partnership between the French and Spanish regions of the Basque country. Since 2013, municipalities along the Basque coast have been working with public and private scientific organisations to build up research projects that will improve public policies for coastal area management. This is an Interreg project funded by the European Union.
SMART-Control, a project selected for funding by the French national research agency (ANR), is engaged in real-time monitoring of the Hyères salt wedge, a salt water intrusion into a large body of freshwater. The aim is to simulate future climate scenarios to assess their effects on water resources, using a model developed by the BRGM.
VALOMAG is investigating the implementation of a technology developed to dismantle and recycle permanent magnets. This project is led by Cirsee, the main Suez research and expertise centre, in partnership with the BRGM, the Atomic Energy Commission, the CRM Group and the universities of Delft and Leyden.
The BRGM's Guadeloupe division and Suez are also cooperating on the European CARIB-COAST project. Led by the BRGM under the Interreg Caribbean programme, this project is setting up a Caribbean network for prevention and crisis management of coastal risks arising with sea-level rise.
