PICVOLC SIGNED

Project "PICVOLC" data sheet

The following table provides information about the project.

 Partnership

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 Project objective

More than 500 million people live within the range of volcanoes whose activity can have disastrous economic and environmental impact. Being able to infer changes in the magmatic system during volcanic unrest is important for improving hazard preparedness and forecast future eruptions. PICVOLC aims to overcome the limitations in the current approach in the modeling of volcanic unrest by developing a new, original methodology that integrates seismic, gravity, and deformation data with 3D numerical inversion to create a detailed representation of the source of volcanic unrest. The current volcanic unrest at Nevado del Ruiz volcano will be the case study used to implement, calibrate, and verify this original approach. In 1985, a lahar generated by a modest eruption of Ruiz completely destroyed the town of Armero, killing 25,000 people. PICVOLC involves the integration of fieldwork with Finite Element Methods modeling and joint numerical inversions of geodetic and geophysical data. PICVOLC´s multi-/interdisciplinary nature aims to better constrain the conceptual and numerical models of volcanic unrest and reduce the ambiguity in the identification of the location, depth, volume change, and nature of the source of unrest. The project involves national and international collaboration; it is academic but has also important implications for the monitoring and reduction of volcanic hazards at Ruiz. In particular, it will provide the following innovative products: (a) definition of the subsurface structures with a new map of Bouguer anomalies; (b) 3D FEM model of the volcano; (c) 3D Image of the source(s) of volcanic unrest from inversion of geodetic data; (d) training of graduate students and the staff of the local volcano observatory in numerical modeling. Finally, PICVOLC will be a key step in achieving my professional maturity by extending and reinforcing my knowledge and skills in the design of, involvement in, and management of an international research project.