SCIENTIFIC PROGRAM

VIII. Future thinking - what's on the horizon that could be a game-changer?  

VIII.3 Volcano databases: new developments and applications

Conveners:
Benjamin Andrews; andrewsb@si.edu
Emanuela De Beni; emanuela.debeni@ingv.it
Fidel Costa; fcosta@ntu.edu.sg
Lucia Capra; lcapra@dragon.geociencias.unam.mx
Laura Becerril; laurabcar@gmail.com

The amount of data generated in volcanology research and monitoring is growing exponentially. There is a need to preserve and share these data, but in many occasions datasets obtained during a research project or after a volcanic crisis end up in a dusty drawer. Compilation and organization of data are crucial for volcanology, and forecasting of eruptions and understanding the evolution volcanic systems critically depend on historical datasets. Databases are increasingly used to organize and disseminate datasets, and WEB GEO-Databases (e.g. databases of geological and geographic information accessible through the web) provide pathways for researchers and civil authorities to access and share those data. In ideal cases, these databases can provide means of combining very different data types, such as lithology, topography, eruption ages, and morphology to generate very useful tools for understanding and mitigating volcanic hazards. Unfortunately, creating and maintaining databases is technically challenging and resource intensive. Moreover, different databases are not always interoperable. There are currently a significant number of volcano related databases, and it is important to identify potential overlaps, create links between them, and identify data types that are not currently being compiled and organized. This session seeks contributions on the availability and organization of various volcanological datasets, on current initiatives for linking between different datasets, on state-of-the-art algorithms for combining and/or mining large datasets accessed through databases, and on research applications that rely on volcano logical datasets. This session is sponsored by the IAVCEI commission on Volcano Geology.