Increasing Resilience to Icelandic Volcanic Eruptions

2010年冰岛埃亚菲亚德拉火山爆发，由于英国和欧洲领空关闭，仅航空业的经济成本估计约为每天2亿英镑，对全球经济的总影响估计为50亿美元。这一火山事件在经济上是近代历史上影响最大、后果最严重的区域规模火山事件，应对此类事件的能力需要大大提高。评估这种事件再次发生的经济风险和该网络的发展是英国境内冰岛火山爆发恢复能力（DRIVE-UK）的目标。可以通过最大限度地减少此类火山爆发对英国和欧洲领空关闭的影响来建立经济弹性，这可以通过开发更强大的近实时观测网络来实现。观察需要近实时进行，因为只有这样，基于测量结果的决定才能够指导民航局和国家空中交通管理局关闭英国和欧洲领空的必要性。将考虑的传感器有：卫星测量、专用飞机测量、气球载仪器和激光雷达仪器。虽然每种类型的测量都在定性检测埃亚菲亚德拉冰盖火山喷发的火山灰方面发挥了重要作用，但用于准确确定每种类型传感器的火山灰质量的算法尚未专门开发，导致后期处理耗费大量时间。这导致准确的定量质量估计只能在测量完成后的几天、几周或几个月内获得。只有通过引入新的算法、数据分析技术和新的测量方法，才能避免未来火山灰事件中的空域关闭。

The economic cost of the Eyjafjallajökull eruption in Iceland in 2010 due to the closure of UK and European airspace has been estimated at around £200m/day solely for the airline industry with total subsequent impacts on the global economy estimated at US$5bn. This volcanic event is economically the most high-impact, high-consequence regional scale volcanic event in recent history, and resilience to such events needs to be significantly increased. Assessing the economic risk of reoccurrence of such an event and development of this network is the goal of Developing the Resilience to Icelandic Volcanic Eruptions within the UK (DRIVE-UK). Economic resilience can be built by minimising the impact of such eruptions on UK and European airspace closure, which can be achieved through developing a more robust network of near-real-time observations. Observations need to be made in near-real-time as only then will decisions based on the measurements be able to guide the Civil Aviation Authority and National Air Traffic Service as to the necessity to close UK and European airspace. The sensors that will be considered are: satellite measurements, dedicated aircraft measurements, balloon borne instruments and lidar instruments. While each of these types of measurements played an important role in qualitative detection of volcanic ash from the Eyjafjallajökull eruption, the algorithms used for accurate determination of volcanic ash mass for each type of sensor had not been specifically developed, resulting in considerable time consuming post-processing. This resulted in accurate quantitative mass estimates only being available days, weeks, or months after the measurements had been made. Only by introducing new algorithms, data analysis techniques, and new novel measurements will closure of airspace in future volcanic ash episodes be avoided.