A novel framework for a unified international system of volcano early warning and hazard tracking

While numerous global initiatives exist to address the potential hazards posed by volcanic eruption events and assess impacts from a civil security viewpoint, there is still no single, unified, international system of early warning and hazard tracking for eruptions. Numerous gaps exist in the risk reduction cycle, from data collection, to data processing, and finally dissemination of salient information to relevant parties. As part of the International Space University's Space Studies Program during summer 2008, a detailed gap analysis of the state of volcano disaster risk reduction was undertaken. Using this analysis as a basis, a novel framework to deal with all the identified gaps is proposed as an outcome of this study. This paper presents the principal innovations concerning the data and information processing within this work. The name of the framework was chosen to be VIDA to abbreviate ‘Volcanic Activity Processing of Observation and Remote Sensing Data Integrated Data-Sharing and Analysis’. In order to present this framework, it is shown how different high performance computing resources can be orchestrated in order to support fast and efficient tools that would support VIDA in mitigating the risk posed by volcanic eruptions and other natural hazards. Furthermore, how the system could be used by describing different use cases is also presented in this paper.

I. Introduction

The most important effects of volcanic eruptions are the human casualties. There are over 1500 active volcanoes (excluding undersea volcanoes) around the world [12]. Some of these volcanoes are in populated areas, posing a significant threat to the safety of human lives. Since the beginning of the 20th century, the two largest volcanic disasters in terms of fatalities were the 1902 eruption of Mont Pelée in French Martinique and the 1985 eruption of Nevado del Ruiz in Colombia, causing 30,000 and 23,000 deaths respectively. However, the number of people affected by volcanic events, for example requiring immediate assistance during a period of emergency, must also be taken into account. In 1991 the eruption of Mt. Pinatubo in the Philippines killed approximately 600 people, but affected more than one million [11].