GG-TOP: Gravity Gradient - Technologies and Opportunities Programme

重力测量产生了一种特殊的魅力，从感觉引力的日常体验到广义相对论和时空的奥秘。与其他力相比，引力弱得令人惊讶，这使得引力屏蔽几乎是不可能的。重力测量非常适合深入地下，它们在石油和矿产勘探、地下测绘和气候研究等领域已经使用了100多年。然而，尽管重力测量具有很高的价值，但在长时间和繁琐的测量以及地质噪声方面存在一些缺点。GG-TOP响应了对整体开发方案日益迫切的需求，该方案提高了仪器的灵敏度，模拟仪器和地质噪声，识别地下物体，融合和呈现来自多传感器系统的信息。GG-TOP联盟是真正的多学科联合基础和应用物理学家，土木和电气工程师以及考古学家在一个共同的目标。GG-TOP有一个强大的利益相关者组成部分，与各级互动和潜在用户直接影响研究方案。GG-TOP将明确评估其新技术在城市基础设施（管道，电缆等）等各种应用中的潜力。和空（地窖，隧道，..）我们预计，这一方案的成果将是一套适用于各种需求的技术，并导致一系列后续产品开发方案。

Gravity measurements exert a particular fascination ranging from the everyday experience of feeling the gravitational force holding us on ground to the mysteries of general relativity and space time. Compared to other forces gravity is surprisingly weak, making shielding of gravitation practically impossible. Gravity measurements are ideally suited to look deep inside the ground and they have been used for over 100 years in fields as oil and mineral exploration, underground mapping and climate research. However, although gravity measurements are highly valued, there are some drawbacks in terms of long and tedious measurements and geological noise. GG-TOP responds to an increasingly pressing demand for a holistic development programme driving sensitivity of instrumentation, modelling instrument and geological noise, discriminating underground objects, fusing and presenting the information from multi-sensor systems. The GG-TOP consortium is truely multi-disciplinary uniting fundamental and applied physicists, civil and electrical engineers and archaeologists behind a joint goal. GG-TOP has a strong Stakeholder compontent with interactions at all levels and potential users directly influencing the research programme. GG-TOP will explicitly evaluate the potential of its new technology in applications as diverse as urban infrastructure (pipes, cables...) and void (cellars, tunnels,..) mapping, seabed inspection, archaeology and fundamental tests of physics.We anticipate the outcome of this programme to be a technology suite adaptable to various needs and leading to a range of follow-on product development programmes.