Potential and limitations of risk scenario tools in volcanic areas through an example at Mount Cameroon

Abstract

Abstract. This paper presents an integrated approach to conduct a scenario-based volcanic risk assessment on a variety of exposed assets, such as residential buildings, cultivated areas, network infrastructures or individual strategic buildings. The focus is put on the simulation of scenarios, based on deterministic adverse event input, which are applied to the case study of an effusive eruption on the Mount Cameroon volcano, resulting in the damage estimation of the assets located in the area. The work is based on the recent advances in the field of seismic risk. A software for systemic risk scenario analysis developed within the FP7 project SYNER-G has been adapted to address the issue of volcanic risk. Most significant improvements include the addition of vulnerability models adapted to each kind of exposed element and the possibility to quantify the successive potential damages inflicted by a sequence of adverse events (e.g. lava flows, tephra fall, etc.). The use of an object-oriented architecture gives the opportunity to model and compute the physical damage of very disparate types of infrastructures under the same framework. Finally, while the risk scenario approach is limited to the assessment of the physical impact of adverse events, a specific focus on strategic infrastructures and a dialogue with stakeholders helps in evaluating the potential wider indirect consequences of an eruption.

Space-Based Earth Observations for Disaster Risk Management

“…The fact that the fragility curves approach is not equally adopted across all natural hazards is partly due to the characteristics of hazards themselves (Douglas 2007). For example, coastal cliffs erosion or pyroclastic flows commonly cause total collapse of buildings (Dawson et al 2009;Gehl et al 2013). However, this is also due to the focus of scientific communities, who tend to put more emphasis on the physical processes and hazards than on the characterization of physical vulnerability (Douglas 2007;Geiss and Taubenbock 2013).…”

“…• disaster scenarios to simulate the impacts of crisis events and test emergency procedures: such scenarios primarily require information about vulnerability and exposure (see Sects. 3.2 and 3.3), in order to compute the potential impacts of adverse phenomena such as earthquakes or volcanic eruption (Gehl et al 2013;Marrero et al 2012;Sedan et al 2013;Zuccaro et al 2008). Information about the hazard is important as well in order to communicate the likelihood of each scenario to the bodies in charge of disaster management (see Sect.…”

Investigating the Management of Geological Hazards and Risks in the Mt Cameroon Area Using Focus Group Discussions

“…Donovan et al (2014) suggest that Mount Cameroon is considered as a low risk potential, due to the predominantly effusive nature of its eruptions, but with an extremely high likelihood of an eruption in the next 30 years. A number of volcanic hazard and risk assessments have been performed (Bonne et al 2008;Thierry et al 2008;Favalli et al 2011;Gehl et al 2013) but these have largely been limited to scientific publications. Translation of relevant scientific information into understandable language for the local population is yet to be fully implemented in the area, and will facilitate the delivery of more efficient assistance in preparedness and response to natural hazards (e.g.…”

WebGIS as boundary tools between scientific geoinformation and disaster risk reduction action in volcanic areas

“…This supported the idea that, beside more specialized tools for managing geo-information databases or designing eruption scenarios (e.g. Gehl et al, 2013), an interoperable Web-based tool is required to facilitate the visualization, by non-GIS experts, of complex hazard and risk databases (Salvi et al, 1999). Functionalities for updating the data layers through the WebGIS application were not considered to be a priority here.…”