The most important organization for geological collaboration is the International Union of Geological Sciences (IUGS). The IUGS secretariat is located at NGU.
The International Geological Congress (IGC) is the IUGS organization responsible for congresses. IGC organizes world congresses every fourth year, and in 2008 this congress will take place in Lillestrøm near Oslo.
Attention on Planet Earth
The great attention focused on our own planet lead the UN's General Assembly in 2005 to declare 2008 as The International Year of Planet Earth (IYPE), following proposals by UNESCO and IUGS. 'The Year' started in 2007 and will last to the end of 2009. The IYPE secretariat is also located at NGU. There are now about 60 countries actively participating in IYPE.
OneGeology
OneGeology is an international initiative of geological surveys of the world and is a lighthouse project in The International Year of Planet Earth (IYPE). The aim is to produce geological maps with services from all over the world on the Internet. Harmonizing maps and data towards equal global semantics is an ongoing work. This is of benefit to the environment, industry, support and planning - locally and globally. The solutions are based on standardized (ISO) distributed technology. The project up to now has been marketed by the British Geological Survey (BGS) and implemented by the French Geological Survey (BRGM). Today, about one hundred countries are participating, and about forty of these providing services.
OneGeology
NGU in the OneGeology-project
Copyright and use of data
Because the geological surveys will be suppliers of data to this database, the push is on to make the International Consortium of Geological Surveys (ICOGS) more operational with a board and secretariat. It is important to secure the copyright and use of the data in a world with more and more commercial distributors of knowledge.
Geology is not confined by national borders, and there is therefore a strong growth in regional amalgamations of geological surveys. EuroGeoSurveys (EGS) is an association of more than 30 European surveys, and EGS has become more important in shaping EU's directives and positions.
Baltic region and Russia
The geological surveys in Europe are organized rather differently, from being part of a ministry to being a foundation. This has limited EGS' possibility to become an executive body for the EU. Therefore the European Geological Survey EEIG (European Economic Interest Group) has been established, which will be financed by carrying out work paid for by the EU Commission or underlying agencies. NGU is one of the founders of this organization.
NGU has also a cooperation agreement with the Directorate for Mineral Resources in Russia (Rosnedra) on a far-reaching geological mapping project. On a less formal level there is a close cooperation with the geological surveys in Scandinavia and in the Baltic region.