The 2025 EPS Special award is granted to the two papers by Alken et al. (2021) and Tsuno et al. (2023).

The International Geomagnetic Reference Field (IGRF) model is the standard geomagnetic field model widely used not only in the scientific community but also in practical applications such as satellite attitude determination and control systems. This paper presents the 13th generation of the IGRF model covering the period from 2020.0 to 2025.0. The paper has been cited more than 920 times and has accumulated more than 65,000 views and downloads (as of March 2026). Owing to its outstanding contribution to geomagnetism and its broad impact on both scientific research and societal applications, this paper was selected for the EPS Special Award.

This paper presents a blind prediction exercise of strong ground motion conducted in the framework of the special issue associated with « the 6th International Symposium on the Effects of Surface Geology on Seismic Motion », using data from the 2016 Kumamoto Earthquake. Although research on strong ground motion for significant earthquakes has advanced significantly over the past three decades, quantitative evaluation and prediction of surface geology effects remain challenging. The study focuses on records observed at a single site in Kumamoto City and analyzes simulation results submitted by 15 international research teams. Unlike previous blind tests that primarily compared numerical codes, participants independently selected their own methods and models. The results show that observed values generally fall within the mean ± one standard deviation of the predictions, and that the proposed approach reproduces three-component motions within a factor of two. By quantitatively demonstrating the current state of the art in seismology and engineering seismology, this work makes an outstanding contribution to the community. In recognition of this outstanding contribution, the EPS Special Award is conferred upon this paper.