STREVA will bring together researchers from universities, research institutes and volcano observatories, to explore methods for reducing the negative consequences of volcanic activity on communities. We will work both with communities facing volcanic threats and with those responsible for monitoring, preparing for and responding to those threats. Our main partners are volcano monitoring agencies and observatories in Colombia, the Caribbean and Ecuador, and through them, disaster managers and disaster researchers throughout the region, as well as residents of communities at risk. We will use a number of techniques to build links between the project and the wider community, including workshops, running scenario exercises, and using social media to report our results. Our aim, by working collaboratively across different disciplines, is to develop and apply a risk assessment framework that will generate better plans to reduce the negative consequences of volcanic activity on people and assets. Volcanic risk is a complex problem, which we shall understand by investigating a number of volcanoes, at-risk communities, emergencies and policy responses across the region. These case studies will help us to identify common issues in volcanic disaster risk and ultimately develop regional risk assessment processes. These will be crucial for long-term planning to reduce exposure to volcanic hazards. The countries in which we will work are all middle income and face multiple volcanic threats, often in close proximity to large towns and cities. The main focus will be on six volcanic sites across the Lesser Antilles, Ecuador and Colombia. We will begin the project by reviewing the secondary literature on three well monitored and active volcanoes, to analyse what has already been done to understand and reduce risk to the surrounding population. Through in-depth empirical research in these volcanic areas we shall begin to develop, test and apply our new risk assessment framework and methods for application. We will then take these lessons and apply them to three high-risk volcanoes where monitoring and understanding is less advanced. STREVA's work will generate improvements in: (i) methods for forecasting the start of eruptions and changes in activity during eruption; (ii) prediction of areas at-risk (the "footprint") from different volcanic hazards; (iii) understanding of the factors that make people and their assets more vulnerable to volcanic threats; (iv) understanding of institutional constraints and capacities and how to improve incentives for risk reduction By the end of the project, our new knowledge will help us to measure volcanic risk more accurately and monitor how that risk is changing. The practical results will be a strengthening in the capacity of stakeholders at different scales (staff in volcano observatories, local and national governments and NGOs) to produce risk assessments for high-risk volcanoes and use them to improve preparedness and response to volcanic emergencies and build resilience in the surrounding communities through long-term planning. In adopting this approach, STREVA will have real impacts in real places, and will significantly advance the fields of volcanic risk analysis and disaster risk reduction.

Our joint project is called 'Curating Crises'. It brings together teams from the Caribbean (Seismic Research Centre, University of the West Indies, and the Montserrat Volcano Observatory) and the UK (University of East Anglia, University of Oxford, the Royal Society and The National Archives), and focuses on the histories of volcanic crises in the Caribbean. In the past, environmental crises (like volcanic eruptions, or earthquakes) were seen as an opportunity by European scientists to 'drop in', make measurements, gather samples and return home to share their knowledge with other European scientists. This colonial history has left two legacies. First, while there are detailed reports of some of these past crises in European libraries, museums and archives, a lot of this information is only accessible to people who are able to visit in person. Second, the importance of local observers, and the value of their observations, has often been overlooked, or forgotten. Our project will change both of these things. We will use digital techniques to scan and share the records of these past events. We want to share these hidden histories with the communities whose history this is - the communities who lived through these events, and who may be exposed to similar events in the future. We will use these past events to think about the best way to respond to future environmental crises by working together, or by working in new ways. We will also uncover the stories of the local observers, and of the knowledge that they helped to create, and share and celebrate these pieces of environmental history with communities in the Caribbean and the UK. Our project will last 13 months. We will study events in three volcanic islands of the Caribbean: St. Vincent, Montserrat and Dominica, from 1890 - 2000. This includes several major eruptions (1902, 1979; St Vincent; 1995- Montserrat), and earthquake activity (1934-1939, Montserrat). It covers a period of time when all three islands started as British Crown Colonies; and two later became independent nations. We will also look at the way that observations and measurements have changed through time - and see how 'remote' observations, for example from satellites, or measurements by networks of automated instrument have changed the ways that data are shared, interpreted and stored. By the end of our project, our findings will help us to work out the best ways to investigate these and other examples of 'hidden histories', and will give us new ideas for ways that we can work together to understand the environment.

In January 2013 volcanic activity at the 'frequently active' Volcan de Colima, Mexico resumed in the form of Vulcanian explosions. Such Vulcanian explosions generate hazardous products such as tephra fallout and pyroclastic density currents and as such potentially pose a considerable risk to the population that live around the volcano. This research aims to take this urgent opportunity to study the tephra fallout of these explosions, which will not be preserved otherwise. We will estimate the volume of material being erupted and determine the sulphur dioxide being emitted both before and after explosions. The aim is to understand the driving mechanism for the Vulcanian explosions. Several different methods will be used to study the summit of the volcano and in particular the dimensions of changes, to enable estimation of the rate of any lava extrusion. These methods include over flights of the volcano, allowing photographs to be taken, which will allow estimates of the sizes of lava domes /and or flows to be estimated. In addition, will also use standard optical and radar satellite imagery, which is able to see through cloud cover, to document any changes that have occurred in the summit and the upper flanks. Following initial fieldwork we will characterise the nature of the tephra generated by the activity, its morphology, petrology and chemistry. These studies will provide the basis for understanding the driving mechanism behind this activity. For example is it related to a new pulse of magma and is the gas content of the magma similar to that erupted in previously and how does the geochemistry of the lava compare to previous episodes of activity.

Mass movement flows are a significant natural hazard throughout the world and yet our ability to predict their behaviour and plan for their effects is limited, in part, by our lack of understanding of their flow dynamics. This research will investigate the dynamics of geophysical mass movement flow processes (specifically snow avalanches and pyroclastic flows) by means of carefully-controlled trials at avalanche and volcano test sites. This research will utilise a sophisticated and new Doppler radar imaging instrument, able to form two-dimensional animated images of a variety of geophysical events. This radar has been under development at University College London, supported by the Royal Society, and permits imaging of the dense parts of the flow (often the most important component for risk analyses) by penetrating the suspended matter surrounding snow avalanches and pyroclastic flows. Advanced signal processing algorithms will be used to generate detailed models of the structure and dynamics of the flow. At present, opto-electronic instruments can provide such information at a single point and existing Doppler radar can provide crude images of the flow speed, but averaged over 50 m and only giving an overall measure of the velocity magnitude (with no information on direction). Our instrument will reduce the averaging distance to just 1 m so that, for the first time, information on individual blocks in the flow can be obtained and assessed in relation to their significance for the overall flow dynamics. Thus, we can assess the validity of a variety of flow laws that have been proposed for describing such processes. This will lead to improved models for these flow processes by limiting the values of coefficient in the models to reasonable values and rejecting some proposed flow laws outright. This will lead to more accurate modelling of these processes, which in turn will improve risk analyses and the design of defensive structures. This study will therefore considerably increase our understanding of flow movement and raise the status of UK research in this area to internationally-leading standards.

At erupting volcanoes, just before magma, or molten rock, arrives at the surface to produce lava and ash, it can become much more viscous and reluctant to flow. This change in character of the magma in turn affects a number of other processes - high pressures build, gas flows change and the rate of flow of the magma itself becomes variable. Sometimes these changes vary systematically every few hours to produce a periodic behaviour. Being able to measure such periodic behaviour is very useful to scientists in volcano observatories for two reasons. Firstly, certain times in the period are much more prone to explosions and hazardous flows, and so being able to forecast their occurrences is useful. Secondly, by observing how a variety of phenomena change during each cycle allows the conditions that give rise to the periodic flow to be understood. This in turn allows the longer-term behaviour of the volcano to be better anticipated, with benefits to people affected. In this project we will improve our understanding such behaviour at Soufriere Hills Volcano, Montserrat. This type of periodic behaviour is probably common at the more dangerous type of volcano with magma rich in silica. However, it is very difficult to observe and as a consequence not well understood. This is because some of the signals associated with it are restricted to near the vent of volcano and are difficult to measure. One place where such periodic signals were measured is Soufriere Hills. Over an interval of a few months in early 1997, tiltmeters that measure the inclination of the ground surface, recorded a remarkable series of cycles of ground motion up and down with a period of about 9 hours. Unfortunately, the tiltmeters were destroyed by the volcano and the location was subsequently too dangerous to re-install new ones. We plan to bring a new technology to bear on this problem in a 2-year project based at the University of Reading and applied at the Montserrat Volcano Observatory. Rather than measure the ground movement using an instrument buried in the ground we will do so from a safe distance using radar interferometry. From a few kilometres away we will measure the outward and inward movement of the ground around the lava dome growing within the crater at Soufriere Hill. We expect the cycle to be measured over a few hours and to an accuracy of a few millimetres for a signal ten times as large. A portable, ground-based radar interferometer has been developed for this type of task, and we will be the first to use it on a volcano like this. Because the instrument gives an image of the ground displacement rather than a point reading it will be able to measure the spatial pattern of motion, by making measurements from different viewpoints. This will enable the new measurements to test a hypothesis that the conduit feeding the magma to the surface below Soufriere Hills Volcano has a shape like a vertical cylinder joined onto a fissure below depths of about one kilometre. The technology of the measurements of earthquakes, gas and wider deformation of the whole island routinely made by the Montserrat Volcano Observatory has advanced greatly since 1997, particularly the frequency of measurements. We will use these frequent (very hour and less) measurements of the cycle to compare with a computer simulation of the magma-filled conduit. This will help us to understand better how the conduit behaves and how it might behave in the future.