Strengthening Resilience in Volcanic Areas (STREVA)

STREVA cuts across traditional scientific fields and all those involved will benefit from closer interaction with new disciplines, which will be achieved through a series of workshops and collaboration in work packages 5 and 6 of the project. These take a start-to-end interdisciplinary approach to risk analysis, scenario planning, communication and knowledge sharing. STREVA will generate a pool of scientists, both in the UK and abroad, including eight post-doctoral researchers, with an appreciation of the broad range of components that contribute to building resilience in volcanic regions. Principal Investigators are involved in other initiatives that provide the opportunity for STREVA to leverage resources and have a wider influence. Examples include:
VOLDIES, an ERC Advanced Grant on volcanic risk
VUELCO, an EU FP7 project that aims to improve the understanding of the processes behind volcanic unrest and the ability to forecast its outcome.
GVM, an international network providing a platform for information on local to global scale volcanic hazards and risk.
CASAVA, a French project that addresses volcanic risk in French territories in the eastern Caribbean.
NEMOH, a European training network in volcanology
CDKH, a UK/Dutch project to provide research and technical assistance to developing country governments on issues that span climate and development.
Vhub, an NSF initiative to enhance and develop collaboration and knowledge sharing in volcanic research and risk mitigation.
EVOSS, the EU funded European Volcano Observatory Space Services
STREVA will interact closely with the successful IRNH earthquake consortium and the knowledge exchange fellows within IRNH. We will also act to broker new synergistic research that will augment the development of the risk assessment framework and methods for its application produced by STREVA during the project. It is anticipated this will involve other members of the UK volcanological community and researchers from other disciplines, including those working in health and engineering and on media and cultural aspects of risk communication, whose work would be enriched by and provide additional input to the risk assessment framework.
STREVA has strong links with research institutions in the study region resulting from long-term collaborations and recent visits during the Caribrisk scoping study. These are the University of the West Indies Seismic Research Centre (SRC) and Disaster Risk Reduction Centre (DRRC); the Montserrat Volcano Observatory (MVO), the Servicio Geologica Colombiano (Ingeominas), the Observatorio Sismologico del Suroccidente (OSSO), and the Instituto Geofisco of the Escuela Politecnica Nacional de Ecuador (IGEPN). Each institute is responsible for monitoring several active volcanoes, assessment of hazards and risks, provision of advice to authorities, governments and citizens during volcanic emergencies, and for long term planning and policy development. They face a high workload to maintain monitoring networks and respond to crises. STREVA provides them with the opportunity to participate in the development and implementation of state-of-the-art monitoring techniques, and benefit from the analysis of archived datasets through workshops and risk assessments in the study region. STREVA will interact with local authorities, NGOs, insurance companies and regional and national development agencies; partnerships that are critical to building closer links with the scientific community and observatories, delivering research to end users, and ultimately ensuring progress in increasing resilience in volcanic regions. The relevance of SRTEVA's research is not however restricted to the individual hazards under consideration. There are commonalities in the physical processes, operation of monitoring systems and the causes of vulnerability across hazards. We anticipate results being applicable to a wider range of hazards including flooding, hurricanes and landslide

STREVA intends to achieve a set of research aims that will create new knowledge for the improved analysis of volcanic risk. This analysis, focussed around 3 'forensic' and 3 'trial' volcanic settings will help shape the process of integrating volcanic risk management in appropriate policies at local, national and regional level.
This will depend on STREVA forging trusted relationships with key stakeholders, having compelling and clearly communicated information on the components and dynamics of risk and developing a solid understanding of the complexity of policy processes. In turn, if implemented well, such policies will help to strengthen the resilience of people and assets exposed to volcanic hazards. Policies may include restricting land use, improving early warning systems, developing new building code guidance, supporting particular approaches to relocation and investing in improved education or new communications protocols during crises. In working towards such an impact, STREVA intends to show by example that interdisciplinary research can be applied in volcanic settings in ways that lead to an increase in community resilience.
Outputs of STREVA research will benefit a number of end users, both immediately and over the longer term. By working with a range of local and regional stakeholders to achieve a better understanding of the components and dynamics of risk in volcanic areas, STREVA aims to improve the policies and practices of businesses, public sector agencies and non-government organisations responsible for reducing disaster risk and building resilience. Those benefitting directly from this research include local governments and public sector agencies based or working close to the 'trial' volcanoes (such as civil defence authorities), observatories and local elected officials. Although there have been recent signs of unrest, no eruptions have taken place hence local authorities have little experience managing the associated risks. They will be consulted throughout the project and involved in work on forecasting and characterising vulnerability and institutional capacity to deal with different aspects of volcanic risk and will participate in volcanic unrest simulation exercises.
Risk assessments produced by WPs 1-4 can be used immediately by these stakeholders to improve decision making, in particular with regard to evacuations and land-use planning in high risk areas. Information from the 'forensic' studies will be made available to local decision makers at the trial volcanoes to help them understand the interactions between different dimensions of risk. These outputs will continue to be of use over the longer term as risk conditions change, as STREVA will develop innovative methods for incorporating broader understandings of risk into quantitative risk assessments and applying these to dynamic, changing risk situations.
Beyond the trial volcanoes, national public sector agencies will benefit indirectly from this research. National DRR policies are likely to be strengthened from the inclusion of new approaches to volcanic risk analysis and risk communication. Within the private sector, insurance companies will benefit from information produced by the volcanic risk assessments, which may help to support the development of parametric insurance products for inclusion with the Caribbean Catastrophic Risk Insurance Facility for example. Other likely beneficiaries include international and local NGOs working on disaster risk reduction at community and policy level, whose projects could be improved by more detailed analysis of exposure, vulnerability, capacity and policy processes in study regions, enabling them to develop enhanced advocacy strategies or community-based disaster risk reduction plans. Ultimately, the most important beneficiaries are people whose lives and livelihoods are threatened by volcanic hazards. Their resilience is expected to increase as a result of STREVA's work on the trial volcanoes.