  In this work, we develop a novel Galerkin-L1-POD scheme for the subdiffusion
model with a Caputo fractional derivative of order $\alpha\in (0,1)$ in time,
which is often used to describe anomalous diffusion processes in heterogeneous
media. The nonlocality of the fractional derivative requires storing all the
solutions from time zero. The proposed scheme is based on continuous piecewise
linear finite elements, L1 time stepping, and proper orthogonal decomposition
(POD). By constructing an effective reduced-order scheme using problem-adapted
basis functions, it can significantly reduce the computational complexity and
storage requirement. We shall provide a complete error analysis of the scheme
under realistic regularity assumptions by means of a novel energy argument.
Extensive numerical experiments are presented to verify the convergence
analysis and the efficiency of the proposed scheme.
