Descrizione del progetto
Prevedere la minaccia di distruzione
Si stima che in tutto il mondo ci siano circa 1 500 vulcani potenzialmente attivi sulla terraferma: molti sembrano essere «morti» da secoli, ma alcuni potrebbero essere solo «dormienti». Nel 2019, ci sono state 73 eruzioni confermate da 70 vulcani diversi. Le eruzioni mortali non sono comuni, ma accadono: ecco perché prevedere le eruzioni (il tempo e la gravità) è così importante. Il progetto DEEPVOLC, finanziato dall’UE, sta applicando i progressi dell’intelligenza artificiale e del monitoraggio satellitare per creare nuovi set di dati geodetici trasformativi. In particolare, baserà le sue osservazioni sulla missione satellitare europea Sentinel-1S, lanciata di recente, che ha fatto progredire la capacità degli scienziati di misurare le deformazioni superficiali di tutti i vulcani del mondo. In definitiva, il progetto creerà un sistema per monitorare e prevedere le deformazioni provocate dalla migrazione del magma sottostante, un indicatore di potenziale attività vulcanica.
Obiettivo
DEEPVOLC will radically advance the way future activity is forecast at volcanoes by applying advances in artificial intelligence to transformative new geodetic datasets. 200 million people live within 30 km of a volcano. Accurate forecasting of volcanic eruptions is problematic because 1) it relies on human interpretation at individual volcanoes, 2) a volcano can behave in unexpected ways not previously seen at that location, and 3) most volcanoes are not instrumented. DEEPVOLC will address this by i) applying artificial intelligence, ii) using data for all volcanoes worldwide, and iii) exploiting advances in satellite monitoring. A key indicator of potential volcanic activity is deformation of a volcano's surface due to magma migrating beneath. Surface movements as small as a few millimetres can now be measured from space, using satellite-borne radar. A recently-launched European satellite mission, Sentinel-1, has transformed our ability to measure surface deformation at all of the world's volcanoes, acquiring data at least twice every twelve days. However, forecasting how deforming volcanoes will behave in the future remains challenging. In this project I will apply recently developed deep learning approaches to the satellite data. This is an entirely new approach to forecasting volcanic activity, which currently relies on the individual expertise available at each observatory, and which is only now made possible due to the launch of Sentinel-1 and advances in deep learning algorithms. DEEPVOLC will combine knowledge from all volcanoes that have been active in the era of satellite deformation observations, and will continue to improve as it ingests data from new activity. The main deliverable will be a system for volcano observatories that uses knowledge of how volcanoes behave globally to automatically identify deformation at volcanoes locally, and forecast how the deformation will evolve, indicating the probability of eruption.
Campo scientifico
- engineering and technologymechanical engineeringvehicle engineeringaerospace engineeringsatellite technology
- natural sciencesearth and related environmental sciencesgeologyvolcanology
- engineering and technologyelectrical engineering, electronic engineering, information engineeringinformation engineeringtelecommunicationsradio technologyradar
- natural sciencescomputer and information sciencesartificial intelligencemachine learningdeep learning
Programma(i)
Argomento(i)
Meccanismo di finanziamento
ERC-COG - Consolidator GrantIstituzione ospitante
LS2 9JT Leeds
Regno Unito