OR/15/032 Appendix 4 Related projects
| Mee K, Duncan M J. 2015. Increasing resilience to natural hazards through crowd-sourcing in St. Vincent and the Grenadines. British Geological Survey Internal Report, OR/15/32. |
Strengthening Resilience in Volcanic Areas (STREVA)
STREVA is an interdisciplinary project that works aims to reduce the negative impact of volcanic activity on people and assets. The project works across disciplines to develop and apply a practical and adaptable volcanic risk assessment framework. This can be used to generate plans that will reduce the negative consequences of volcanic activity on people and assets. STREVA research focusses on six volcanic sites across the Lesser Antilles, Ecuador and Colombia. These countries are faced with multiple threats from volcanoes and associated natural hazards, often in close proximity to large towns and cities. However, by working across multiple sites, STREVA will identify common issues in volcanic disaster risk in these settings and consider how lessons could be applied worldwide.
In the Lesser Antilles, Soufrière Hills volcano on Montserrat was used as a ‘forensic’ volcano to learn lessons from previous eruptions which could be applied to Soufrière St. Vincent (SVG). The STREVA project has interviewed members of local communities in both locations to understand how people people who have experienced eruptions (i.e. Monserratians) respond, cope and adapt to long-lived eruptions and how those who have not experienced eruptions — or at least not for many years — (i.e. Vincentians), perceive the threat from the volcano and their own vulnerabilities.
STREVA is a collaboration between the BGS, UEA, University of Bristol, University of Oxford, University of Leeds and the Overseas Development Institute, along with several partners in-country. For more information on the STREVA project and its partners, visit http://streva.ac.uk/.
Earth Observation for Risk Information Services in the Caribbean (EO-RISC)
EO-RISC is an European Space Agency (ESA) ‘eoworld’ funded project to demonstrate the benefits of satellite earth observation (EO) technology as a standard tool in planning, implementing, monitoring and assessing for World Bank projects/programmes, and further to establish its use in World Bank operations on a sustainable basis. The project focusses on several countries in the Caribbean but with the specific task of producing land use/land cover mapping for St. Vincent. These maps, along with DEMs and landslide maps for other Caribbean countries, are being utilised through the CHARIM (below).
Caribbean Handbook on Risk Information Management (CHARIM)
CHARIM has produced an online ‘handbook’ (http://www.charim.net/) to support the generation and application of landslide and flood hazard and risk information to inform projects and program of planning and infrastructure sectors, specifically targeted to small countries in the Caribbean region. The methodology centres around a series of use cases, which are practical examples. CHARIM is a collaboration between University Twente (Netherlands), University of West Indies (Trinidad and Tobago), Asian Institute of Technology (Thailand), SSBN Flood Risk Solutions (UK) and Envirosense (UK) and is funded by the World Bank. Maps and DEMs produced by BGS as part of the EO-RISC project have been utilised by the CHARIM project in production of their hazard maps.
European Volcano Observatory Space Services (EVOSS)
The EU FP7 EVOSS project was a Copernicus ‘Downstream Service’ that began in 2010 with a ‘user needs analysis’ for Volcano Observatories (VOs, including Seismic Research Centre, Trinidad) and Volcanic Ash Advisory Centres (VAACs). The project provided multiple near real-time data products (including thermal anomalies, volcanic ash and sulphur dioxide emissions) on an Information System (Virtual Volcano Observatory) that was applauded, particularly by users in Africa. The system could distinguish thermal anomalies from volcanic events and forest fires. The data products were relatively simple belying the complexity of algorithms, methods and infrastructure behind them. Unfortunately, sustainability beyond the project was a challenge. Global progress has been made on the needs of VAACs and the aviation sector and equivalent products are now available at different sites (progress has been supported by funding from ICAO, ESA and private sector among others). However, the identified needs of VOs which advise VAACs, national authorities and the public (and could be described as largely humanitarian), have still not been met in a sustainable way. The challenge to sustain EVOSS and similar services for landslides and forest fires was discussed at a ‘Supersites Coordination workshop’ in 2013:
Committee on Earth Observation Satellite (CEOS)
CEOS (i.e. the world’s space agencies) coordinates civil space-based EO programmes and comprises 30 space agencies responsible for the operation of 100 current EO satellite missions. The governments and agencies represented by CEOS have committed to increase the application of their investments in EO satellites to DRR. Several thematic pilot studies (Volcanoes, Earthquakes and Landslides) are underway providing free EO data to research projects working with in-country partners. The research project must provide evidence that free EO data can reduce disaster risk. One of the research projects benefiting from free EO data is the interdisciplinary STREVA (Strengthening Resilience in Volcanic Areas) project, which is partnering SRC and active in St Vincent, Ecuador and Colombia. Unfortunately, few research projects apply excellent science (including EO) in full iterative partnership with appropriate in-country institutions and with co-production of knowledge as STREVA does. The CEOS handbook (2015) admits that ‘obtaining the required spatial and temporal resolution of observations is a challenge on a global basis’. It describes international coordination efforts including the International Disaster Charter, Copernicus, GEO, CEOS and World Meteorological Organisation.
International Disaster Charter
The International Charter aims at providing a unified system of space data acquisition and delivery to those affected by natural or man-made disasters through Authorized Users. Each agency member has committed resources to support the provisions of the Charter and thus is helping to mitigate the effects of disasters on human life and property. BGS is a project manager for geohazard charter activations such as a recent Montserrat volcanic eruption. For the Japan 2011 Tohoku tsunami we utilised Charter data in the field to assist efforts on the ground.
In May 2011, BGS collaborated with scientists from Japan, Australia, the United States, Poland and Indonesia as part of the International Tsunami Survey Team (ITST) organised by UNESCO. They worked in the area around Sendai, in Miyage Prefecture, one of the most seriously damaged regions. In June 2011, BGS returned to Japan with EPOM colleagues funded by a NERC urgency grant. They again worked in close association with Japanese scientists, and worked in the Arahama area and farther southward in Shinchi. BGS is currently helping to produce landslide maps following the recent earthquakes in Nepal.
Global Volcano Model (GVM)
GVM is a growing international network that aims to create a sustainable, accessible information platform on volcanic hazard and risk. GVM will provide systematic evidence, data and analysis of volcanic hazards and risk on global and regional scales, and support Volcano Observatories at a local scale. GVM will develop capabilities to anticipate future volcanism and its consequences.” The GVM project will develop an integrated global database system on volcanic hazards, vulnerability and exposure, make this globally accessible and crucially involve the international volcanological community and users in a partnership to design, develop, analyse and maintain the database system. The GVM project will aim to establish new international metadata standards that will reduce ambiguity in the use of global volcanic datasets. Vulnerability and exposure data will be integrated into the GVM and again new methods of assessment and analysis will be investigated and tested. The project also intends to establish methodologies for analysis of the evidence and data to inform risk assessment, to develop complementary volcanic hazards models, and create relevant hazards and risk assessment tools. The research will provide the scientific basis for mitigation strategies, responses to ash in the atmosphere for the aviation industry, land-use planning, evacuation plans and management of volcanic emergencies. Dr Sue Loughlin (BGS) is chair of GVM and part of the GVM Management Board.
Enhancing Resilience to Reduce Vulnerability in the Caribbean (ERC)
[Source: Dr Shawn Boyce, Chief Hydrologist, Caribbean Institute of Meteorology and Hydrology, personal communication — see full correspondence in Appendix 4]
The Caribbean Institute of Meteorology and Hydrology (CIMH) recently worked with other partners including the CIMA Research Foundation to implement a project entitled 'Enhancing Resilience to Reduce Vulnerability in the Caribbean (ERC)'. The project was funded by the Government of Italy and executed by UNDP Barbados & the OECS.
One of the activities included the adaptation and implementation of a disaster management platform, used to support civil defence in Italy, for use in the Caribbean. The platform, the Caribbean Dewetra Platform, is essentially a data fusion platform that manages and displays hazard, exposure and impact data from various sources in a real-time, geo-spatial environment in support of improved decision making. The platform has a reporting feature that allows the 'crowd' to submit impact information related to the hazard of interest. The information is stored and can be retrieved later for post-assessment purposes. The crowd sourcing tool is based on Ushahidi (http://www.ushahidi.com/) and allows reports to be submitted to the platform using various methods including Twitter, email and the use of the Ushahidi smartphone application. Access to the platform allows users to load and visualize the impacts layer. Country specific profiles were created and distributed to disaster and met services.
The project closed early in 2014. Some persons have utilized the feature post project. The CIMH continues to sustain the platform post project. CIMH are continuing to build capacity and raise awareness of the benefits of the Caribbean Dewetra platform as a support tool applicable to all phases of the disaster cycle. This includes the use of the crowd-sourcing tool. The CIMH completed an assessment related to the December 24–25, 2013 event in St. Vincent. CIMH used the platform to capture impacts whilst in the field.
Rift Volcanism: past, present and future (RiftVolc)
BGS is part of a newly awarded NERC Large Grant to research past and current volcanism and volcanic hazards in the Main Ethiopian Rift. The £3.7 million, five year long project 'RiftVolc' starts in September 2014 and includes the universities of Bristol, Cambridge, Edinburgh, Leeds, Oxford and Southampton as well as Addis Ababa University and the Geological Survey of Ethiopia.
Along the East African Rift (EAR), there is a great variety of volcano types, from large silicic calderas to basaltic fissure swarms, monogenetic cones to off-axis volcanic fields. There is a wide variation in the styles of past volcanic eruptions as well as the frequency and magnitude of these eruptions. The project builds on previous NERC-funded projects including the Ethiopia Afar Geoscientific Lithospheric Experiment (EAGLE), the Afar Rift Consortium(ARC) and Airborne Research & Survey Facility (ARSF) data acquisition over Afar and Ethiopian rift volcanoes. These projects focussed on magmatism and rifting in the EAR. RiftVolc will focus on volcanoes and volcanic plumbing systems in three work packages to address fundamental questions, including:
- What has driven eruptions over geological timescales?
- What controls the active magmatic system and volcanic unrest?
- What are the potential threats from future volcanic activity?
An improved understanding of the evolution of volcanic systems, gained from finding the answers to the first two questions, will provide the foundation on which new methods to assess and forecast volcanic hazards from high risk central volcanoes, active rift segments and volcanic fields will be developed to answer the final question.
GeoSocial — Aurora
GeoSocial is a tool currently being developed by the British Geological Survey for retrieving and displaying information relating to geoscience (initially geohazards) that people have posted on social media sites. Although still in its infancy, the aim of GeoSocial is to explore whether BGS can make use of the wealth of information, publically available through these sites, to help advance scientific understanding and provide better, or, more — timely, advice. GeoSocial employs both passive (i.e. obtaining information which people have shared and which can be retrieved without requiring them to do anything beyond their normal behaviour and actions) and active crowdsourcing techniques.