Development of a tool using satellite products for volcanic eruption monitoring

The availability of EO satellites in the last decades has offered the possibility to integrate the ground surveillance with satellite derived information increasing the knowledge of territory situation and phenomena characteristics during natural disasters. All member states of the European Union are affected by at least one major natural hazard such as Floods, Fires, Windstorms, Earthquakes, Volcanoes, Landslides, Rapid vertical ground displacements, and also by risks related to man-made activities such as chemical and nuclear accidents. The above mentioned risks can be mitigated through a better prevention and preparedness within a multi-risk joint effort of all actors in risk management and integration of societal needs. In this frame the EC FP6 Preview-Eurorisk project aims at developing new geo-information services for atmospheric, geophysical and man-made risk management at a European level; the End-Users of these services are represented by the Civil Defence Agencies of the different partner countries. In the Geophysical Cluster dedicated to earthquakes and volcanoes risks, a prototype system to support end-users (i.e. national Civil Protections) has been developed. The service separates the natural phenomena in 3 main phases: earlywarning, crisis management and post-crisis. The service prototype provides easy and rapid access to assets mapping, mapping, monitoring, forecasting and awareness of risk as well as damage assessment at European, regional and local levels according to the operative necessities of the End-Users. The system products chain consists in: inquiring the satellite data archives, extracting the information/parameter from Earth Observation data using already developed scientific modules producing numerical values or geo-coded thematic maps as products archived in the database system. The End-User interface consists in a Web-GIS system where products, in vector or raster format, are visualized and distributed according to the specific emergency phase.