The ThermoMap project started in September 2010, for a 3 year duration. ThermoMap is an EC co-funded project (FP7-ICT Policy Support Programme) for mapping the potential of very shallow geothermal energy in Europe.

By September 2013, ThermoMap aims at fostering the environment information in order to develop shallow geothermal systems across Europe. Many geographical and geological data exists in the European Member States that is not accessible for the public. ThermoMap will develop a solution to combine the existing datasets for an area visualisation of geothermic resources by soil and groundwater data. ThermoMap intends to visualize geothermal resources in superficial zones of the earth crust to 10 m depth by maps of medium to larger scales.

The ThermoMap project will harmonise and analyse already existing data collections (geological, hydrogeological, soil, climate, land use/land cover and relief geodata) with standardised methods to calculate a value for the geothermal potential on three different low depth levels in order to help finding favourable areas for superficial geothermal exploitation in a very short time and without high costs.

The resulting geothermal potential values will be integrated in an Open Source Web GIS as well as all necessary geodata. Each of the 9 participating EU member states project partners will define an exemplary test area in its country. For these test areas the geodata and calculated geothermal potential values will be shown on cadastral parcel level, while for the entire EU area there will be created a shallow geothermal potential overview map at the scale of 1:250,000.

Currently, 9 countries participle to this project (Germany, France, Iceland, Hungary, Romania, UK, Belgium, Austria and Greece).

For Belgium, two test areas will be covered in detail in order to reflect at least the geological diversity. These are the regions of Ghent and Liège.