Project description
Foreseeing volcanic ash to save air traffic
Volcanic eruptions generate volcanic ash. These plumes of volcanic ash represent a major concern for the aviation industry, threatening human safety and bringing economic losses to the industry. New solutions that estimate, prevent and face the problem, and improve risk management are a constant demand of the industry. However, no solution is still available. The EU-funded ICE4ATM project is working to fill this void. It is proposing the first operational system that foresees and moderates the impact of volcanic ash in real time for multiple stakeholders through local and regional modelling systems. The system is developed by MITIGA Solutions, a company that specialises in preventing and mitigating the impacts of volcano ash on air travel.
Objective
Atmospheric dispersion of hazardous substances (mainly volcanic ash, but also mineral dust or SO2) influences many
economic markets, and poses a variety of problems to the aviation industry. For example, the presence of airborne volcanic
ash at low and jet-cruise atmospheric levels compromises the safety of aircraft operations and forces delays, cancelations
and/or re-routing of aircraft to prevent encounters with volcanic ash clouds. Volcanic eruptions are recurrent events with
more that 500 active volcanoes and an average of 80 eruptions a day affecting the aviation industry. Despite the existing
demand for solutions capable to evaluate and manage these natural hazards, and to provide credible operational expertise
to improve risk management across multiple industries, to date, no commercial product is available in the market to solve
these problems.
MITIGA Solutions (www.mitigasolutions.com) is a firm specialized in evaluating and mitigating the impacts of volcanic
eruptions for the aviation industry. MITIGA develops and commercializes, amongst others, products to quantify volcanic risks
in order to improve air traffic management, insurability and urban resilience. In particular, MITIGA specializes in the
development of the first operational system (ICE4ATM: Solutions on Real Time for Air Traffic Management) to forecast and
mitigate the impact of volcanic ash across different aviation stakeholders in real-time. MITIGA’s core members have a wide
experience and expertise in developing and implementing local and regional modeling systems for quantifying impacts of
volcanic hazards and provide support to volcanic risk reduction and disaster management. MITIGA Solutions is a spin-off of
the Barcelona Supercomputing Center (www.bsc.es) a world renamed institution with over two decades of experience in
developing and implementing models in the fields of geophysics, volcanology and atmospheric impacts.
Fields of science
- engineering and technologymechanical engineeringvehicle engineeringaerospace engineeringaircraft
- natural sciencesearth and related environmental sciencesgeologyvolcanology
- social sciencessociologygovernancecrisis management
- natural sciencesearth and related environmental sciencesphysical geographynatural disasters
- social sciencessocial geographytransporttransport planningair traffic management
Programme(s)
Funding Scheme
SME-2 - SME instrument phase 2Coordinator
08028 Barcelona
Spain
The organization defined itself as SME (small and medium-sized enterprise) at the time the Grant Agreement was signed.