GEOHAZARD MODELING: CONNECTING SIMULATIONS WITH PEOPLE

Natural hazardous phenomena, computational models of their behavior, the effect of model realizations on civil protection organizations in charge of hazard assessment and management, and the response of the impacted population in a time of crisis represent multiple interacting elements with complex feedback processes. A high level of success in reducing loss of life and property related to a natural disaster is difficult to attain, in part because the interaction between science and society is not well connected. The process involves many scales of uncertainty in space and time and there is complex feedback between various elements in the natural/social system. Our goal is to effectively transmit the products of a complex computational model (in this case TITAN2D mass flow model) to a response network of scientists, government officials, and a diverse population living at the foot of an active volcano. The site under consideration is Tungurahua Volcano in Ecuador, which currently threatens ~30,000 people in the town of Baños and surrounding area. Tungurahua has been in an eruptive phase since 1999. In 2006 five people were killed by pyroclastic flows and subsequently its activity has remained high. The problem is to effectively communicate the model and its uncertainty at various scales that are displayed by the TITAN model and transmit this information to a local monitoring and hazards advisory group (Instituto Geofísico - Escuela Politécnica Nacional of Ecuador). In turn IGEPN will communicate the geohazards to the cognizant civil protection agency and to the endangered population through an existing educational program. As a first step, we have developed a probabilistic model for pyroclastic flows using TITAN2D, based on a prior set of events that occurred in August 2006. The next steps will be to implement an effective communication of the hazard using visual simulations and the uncertainties in time and space of this model.