Effective land monitoring aims at identifying signals that alert scientists to changes in activity and may be indicative of a progression towards a geohazard (e.g., volcanic unrest or impending eruptions). Also, during a geohazard emergency, it is of primary importance to have access to high level products helping decision makers. The Geohazard DTC is devoted to improved assessment and management of the geohazard-related risks. This task requires not only the analysis of a variety of observables, but, more importantly, the access to these information products in an easy way, the possibility to integrate other data sources, the analysis of scenarios and their validation and/or recalibration as new real-time data is available. The Geohazard DTC provides the stakeholders [link to stakeholders] with a streamlined environment in which they can access data and products, integrate with ancillary data, and build scenarios. A key issue for policy and decision makers, managers, etc., is the capability to perform simulations with what-if strategies. The what-if analysis is used to explore and compare various scenarios and schedule alternatives based on changing conditions, possibly adding ground data and grey literature.
Workflow to scenarios
The DTC outcomes can be in terms of unknown parameters, such as the seismic source parameters, or provide evolutionary scenarios, e.g., gas and ash dispersion and fall. From the ten modules empowered by the Geohazard DTC, four of them produce scenarios. They are:
DAMSAT performs analysis of the geohazard induced change detection from EO data and the extraction of change index maps by the synergic processing of pre- and post-event imagery. The DAMSAT change detection directly contributes to enhancing the stakeholders knowledge of the spatial and temporal extension of the geohazards effects.
GEOMOD provides simulations of the expected surface deformation pattern due to a wide range of geohazard deformation sources (seismic fault, magmatic cameras, eruptive dykes). It also performs soft computing operations to retrieve the geohazard source parameters through inversion frameworks.
GPUFLOW module exploits a 2D cellular automata algorithm and the GPU computing to simulate the evolution of the lava flow and to provide the stakeholders with evolutionary scenarios.
FALL3D simulates plume dispersal and fallout, and provides quantitative forecasts of the volcanic cloud parameters from numerical models by assimilating near real-time geostationary satellite observations. Besides the what-if scenarios and simulations, FALL3D can be integrated into an operational forecasting system by exploiting high-performance computing (HPC) resources.
DAMSAT is the only one of level 1 category, which means that it exploits satellite imagery directly. GEOMOD, GPUFLOW and FALL3D produce simulations based or informed on raw and processed satellite data.
GET-it will produce:
- probable scenarios at 12, 24 and 48 hours driven and validated by EO data;
- what-if scenarios obtained using historical data and information on exposed value.
The use cases are deployed to demonstrate the capabilities of the Geohazard DTC considering the scenarios implemented for scientific and operational (e.g. civil protection authorities) stakeholders. Last, the Geohazard DTC will be fully integrated in the DestinE system [link to Roadmap toward…] . This means to represent a digital model which acquires and uses data in real-time, allowing the model to forecast future operations of the Geo-Physical System.