Increasing Resilience to Icelandic Volcanic Eruptions

2010年冰岛Eyjafjallajökull火山爆发导致英国和欧洲领空关闭，仅航空业的经济成本估计就高达每天2亿英镑左右，对全球经济的后续影响估计为50亿美元。此次火山事件在经济上是近代历史上影响最大、后果最严重的区域性火山事件，应对此类事件的韧性需要显著提高。评估此类事件再次发生的经济风险和发展该网络是英国境内发展冰岛火山爆发复原力（DRIVE-UK）的目标。通过建立一个更强大的近实时观测网络，可以最大限度地减少火山喷发对英国和欧洲领空关闭的影响，从而建立经济弹性。观测需要在接近实时的情况下进行，因为只有这样，基于测量的决定才能指导民航局和国家空中交通服务部门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、气球机载仪器和激光雷达仪器。虽然这些类型的测量在定性检测Eyjafjallajökull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的传感器的火山灰质量的算法尚未专门开发，导致大量耗时的后处理。这导致精确的定量质量估计只能在测量完成后的几天、几周或几个月才能得到。只有引入新的算法、数据分析技术和新的测量方法，才能避免在未来的火山灰事件中关闭空域。

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.