Abstracts are not currently available in GtR for all funded research. This is normally because the abstract was not required at the time of proposal submission, but may be because it included sensitive information such as personal details.

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.

Abstracts are not currently available in GtR for all funded research. This is normally because the abstract was not required at the time of proposal submission, but may be because it included sensitive information such as personal details.

Abstracts are not currently available in GtR for all funded research. This is normally because the abstract was not required at the time of proposal submission, but may be because it included sensitive information such as personal details.

Our environment has a major influence on all aspects of human endeavour ranging from the mundane, such as deciding whether to cycle or take the bus to work, to the exceptional, such as coping with the ever more damaging effects of extreme natural phenomena (tropical storms, inundations, tsunamis, droughts, etc.). In addition, climate change is one of the most pressing challenges that confront humanity today. What was once viewed as something that might happen in the future is now part of daily life. Because most impacts of climate variability and change occur through extreme weather events and spells, the two issues of weather and climate are closely interlinked. We rely on science and technology to provide the means of managing the complex intricacies of the environment and to meet the pressing challenges of climate change. Mathematics plays a central role in this massive undertaking as it provides the fundamental basis of the theory and modelling of weather, oceans and climate. However the nature of the mathematical challenges is changing and the need for scientists trained in risk and uncertainty is growing rapidly. Meeting these needs can only be achieved by training an entirely new generation of scientists to meet the multi-faceted challenges, with all their complex inter-dependencies. These scientists will need extraordinarily broad training in several scientific areas, including geophysical fluid dynamics, scientific computing, statistics, data assimilation and partial differential equations. Above all, they must understand the mathematics that unifies them. The alignment of Imperial College's Mathematics Department and Grantham Institute for Climate Change with Reading University's Departments of Mathematics and Statistics and of Meteorology has put these two institutions into a unique position to offer a CDT focussing on the priority area: Mathematical Sciences for Weather, Ocean and Climate, as a 50-50 joint venture. We propose to bring together, as academic supervisors and stakeholders in the centre, more than 60 world-leading researchers with expertise in a wide spectrum of areas that comprise the mathematical foundation as well as the frontier application areas. The central aim of the proposal is to build a strong cohort of young scientists whose backgrounds will span the breadth of the mathematical sciences from statistics, PDEs and dynamical systems, scientific computing, data analysis, and stochastic processes including relevant application areas from weather, oceans and climate. These young scientists must also acquire problem-specific knowledge through an array of elective courses and supervisory expertise offered by the two institutions and the external partners. A core component of the cohort training will be a ten-week programme hosted by the Met Office in Exeter which will include lectures given by world-leading scientists and research internships with Met Office staff, tackling real-world projects by teamwork. Key partners to the proposed CDT include major international players in research and operational forecasting for weather, oceans, and climate, including the UK Met Office, the European Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasts, the German DWD, the National Centre for Atmospheric Science and the National Centre for Earth Observation. The EPSRC contribution to the Centre will be heavily leveraged with institutional and external partners, whose financial commitments are estimated to cover 65% of the total costs. The proposal is also in alignment with the global initiative Mathematics of the Planet Earth 2013 which involves scientific societies, universities, institutes and organizations all over the world aiming to learn more about the challenges faced by our planet and to increase the research effort on these issues.