Hazards and timelines of risk and respond: Sólheimajökull, Skaftárkatlar and Öræfajökull, S Iceland (original) (raw)
Related papers
2010
This paper examines the relationship between volcanic risk and the tourism sector in southern Iceland and the complex challenge emergency management officials face in developing effective volcanic risk mitigation strategies. An early warning system and emergency response procedures were developed for communities surrounding Katla, the volcano underlying the Mýrdalsjökull ice cap. However, prior to and during the 2007 tourist season these mitigation efforts were not effectively communicated to stakeholders located in the tourist destination of Þórsmörk despite its location within the hazard zone of Katla. The hazard zone represents the potential extent of a catastrophic jökulhlaup (glacial outburst flood). Furthermore, volcanic risk mitigation efforts in Þórsmörk were based solely on information derived from physical investigations of volcanic hazards. They did not consider the human dimension of risk. In order to address this gap and provide support to current risk mitigation efforts, questionnaire surveys were used to investigate tourists' and tourism employees' hazard knowledge, risk perception, adoption of personal preparedness measures, predicted behaviour if faced with a Katla eruption and views on education. Results indicate that tourists lack hazard knowledge and they do not adopt preparedness measures to deal with the consequences of an eruption. Despite a high level of risk perception, tourism employees lack knowledge about the early warning system and emergency response procedures. Results show that tourists are positive about receiving information concerning Katla and its hazards and therefore, the reticence of tourism employees with respect to disseminating hazard information is unjustified. In order to improve the tourism sector's collective capacity to positively respond during a future eruption, recommendations are made to ensure adequate dissemination of hazard, risk and emergency response information. Most importantly education campaigns should focus on: (a) increasing tourists' knowledge of Katla, jökulhlaup and other volcanic hazards and (b) increasing tourist and employee awareness of the early warning and information system and appropriate behavioural response if a warning is issued. Further, tourism employees should be required to participate in emergency training and evacuation exercises annually. These efforts are timely given that Katla is expected to erupt in the near future and international tourism is an expanding industry in Þórsmörk.
Resident perception of volcanic hazards and evacuation procedures
Natural Hazards and Earth System Science, 2009
Katla volcano, located beneath the Mýrdalsjökull ice cap in southern Iceland, is capable of producing catastrophic jökulhlaup. The Icelandic Civil Protection (ICP), in conjunction with scientists, local police and emergency managers, developed mitigation strategies for possible jökulhlaup produced during future Katla eruptions. These strategies were tested during a full-scale evacuation exercise in March 2006. A positive public response during a volcanic crisis not only depends upon the public's knowledge of the evacuation plan but also their knowledge and perception of the possible hazards. To improve the effectiveness of residents' compliance with warning and evacuation messages it is important that emergency management officials understand how the public interpret their situation in relation to volcanic hazards and their potential response during a crisis and apply this information to the ongoing development of risk mitigation strategies. We adopted a mixed methods approach in order to gain a broad understanding of residents' knowledge and perception of the Katla volcano in general, jökulhlaup hazards specifically and the regional emergency evacuation plan. This entailed field observations during the major evacuation exercise, interviews with key emergency management officials and questionnaire survey interviews with local residents. Our survey shows that despite living within the hazard zone, many residents do not perceive that their homes could be affected by a jökulhlaup, and many participants who perceive that their homes are safe, stated that they would not evacuate if an evacuation warning was issued. Alarmingly, most participants did not receive an evacuation message during the exercise. However, the majority of participants who took part in the exercise were positive about its implementa-Correspondence to: D. K. Bird (dbird@els.mq.edu.au) tion. This assessment of resident knowledge and perception of volcanic hazards and the evacuation plan is the first of its kind in this region. Our data can be used as a baseline by the ICP for more detailed studies in Iceland's volcanic regions.
Tourism, volcanic hazards and education in southern Iceland
Research in 2007 in southern Iceland examined the relationship between volcanic risk and the tourism sector and the complex challenge emergency management agencies face in developing effective volcanic risk mitigation strategies. The popular tourist region of Þórsmörk was the focus of this survey due to its location within the jökulhlaup hazard zone of Katla. The survey, conducted prior to the implementation of education and training campaigns, showed that tourists lacked volcanic hazard knowledge and both tourists and tourism employees lacked knowledge of the early warning system and emergency response procedures they should follow.
Responding to volcanic eruptions in Iceland: from the small to the catastrophic
Palgrave Communications, 2018
There is no doubt that as the world’s population continues to grow and expand in hazardous environments, so too does our vulnerability to disaster. Researching disaster risk is therefore an ongoing challenge requiring a continual process of generating understanding of the changing environmental and societal characteristics that influence disaster vulnerability. Iceland, as the land of fire and ice, is of no exception. With a changing population, exponential growth in tourism and a volcanic eruption on average every 3–4 years, disaster risk research is of critical importance. Based on questionnaire survey results, interviews with key stakeholders and data derived from Statistics Iceland, this paper considers how residents might respond to a future eruption by examining their experience of the 2010 Eyjafjallajökull eruptions against the changing demographic, economic and political landscape. While authorities were pleased with public response to evacuation orders in 2010, some residents did not evacuate. The reasons for not evacuating were due to caring for others or thinking the warnings were not applicable. Yet, most residents showed respect for authority and acknowledged the necessity of the evacuations. The relatively small, homogenous population of Iceland coupled with its peoples’ desire to cooperate contributed to this success. Within these communities, people are bound together by common beliefs, values and activities. However, the changing social landscape will test this phenomenon. In particular, the region’s economic base is evolving from traditional farming practices to one that is increasingly reliant on tourism. Demographic changes most notably include greater international migration to the South, as well as from the capital region. As the communities diversify, so too will people’s beliefs, values and activities. This paper explores the challenges this diversity brings with respect to generating a proactive public response to future evacuation orders. Furthermore, it highlights the importance of capturing narratives of actions and activities to enhance our understanding of the process of decision-making and the situational factors that add to its complexity. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41599-018-0205-6
NATURAL HAZARDS: INCREASING CHALLENGES FOR TOURISM DESTINATIONS
In the last years, natural extreme events have caused substantial damage to tourism destinations in Switzerland. Apart from inundations, primarily mass movements such as falling rocks, landslides, debris flows or avalanches are of importance in the Swiss Alps. Such events have not only caused substantial direct damage to tourism infrastructures, but also indirectly led to significant decreases of tourists and therefore to considerable deficiencies in receipts. Not least as a result of an expected increase of certain extreme events in relation to climate change, public awareness of the topic has risen significantly. The enhanced cross-linking of the economy and growing safety requirements have led to a higher vulnerability. From a tourism point of view, its strong exposure and the expansion of tourism infrastructures on the one hand and increasing activities of tourists in hazardous areas on the other hand resulted in a higher risk for accidents and damages to property. Furthermore, extreme events can occur more frequently or more intensely due to the larger energy content in a warmer atmosphere in conjunction with climate change. Altogether, the increase of the loss potential and the accumulation of certain extreme events lead to an augmented risk for tourism in the Alps. In a three-phased analysis of tourist communes in the alpine region, it was analyzed, how natural hazards are handled and how tourism destinations have been affected by events in the past. Out of this, tourisms vulnerability to natural hazards was deduced and the central challenges for mountain tourist communes are presented. Almost two thirds of the polled communes have already been affected by extreme events, which redounded to tourist damage, at least once. Avalanches, and in particular the avalanche winter of 1999, were the most mentioned events followed by inundations. The main effects on tourism were closed or interrupted traffic routes as well as damages to buildings and tourism facilities. Due to the bad accessibility, tourists couldn't arrive or even had to be evacuated, which entailed turnover losses of tourism enterprises. Apart from landscape damages, also loss of attraction and negative impacts on the image were given as consequences of the event. Despite the high media presence of most events, a vast majority (76%) of the communes is of the opinion that the event did not effect on the degree of popularity of the tourism destination. The reaction of tourism demand is amongst others depending on the guest segment. Day-trippers usually reacted a little more strongly, but also recovered faster than overnight visitors. Domestic tourism usually decreases less dramatically and more briefly than inbound tourism. Apart from campers, who react particularly sensitively to weather events, the supplementary accommodation tends to be more resistant to disturbances. Regular guests as well remain rather faithful to their destination after the occurrence of an extreme event. Individual tourists come back sooner than group tours. Regarding tour operators, beside the time (season) of an event also the spatial proximity is an important influencing factor. Small events tend to be hardly noticed by large international organizers. However, larger events can lead to falsified pictures and stronger reactions with tour operators far away, while smaller and closer operators usually react more flexibly. Most natural hazards, which occurred in Switzerland in the past, hardly led to declines in tourism. Where effects were noted, they usually had short term character. It was shown that past events normally have fallen into oblivion rather fast, both on part of the tourists and the local authorities.
Lessons learned from the 2010 evacuations at Merapi volcano
Journal of Volcanology and Geothermal Research, 2013
The rapid onset and large magnitude of the 2010 eruption of Merapi posed significant challenges for evacuations and resulted in a peak number of almost 400,000 Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs). A pre-existing hazard map and an evacuation plan based on the relatively small magnitude of previous eruptions of the 20th century were utilized by emergency officials during the initial phase of the eruption (25 October-3 November, 2010). However, when the magnitude of the eruption increased greatly on 3-5 November 2010, the initial evacuation plan had to be abandoned as danger zones were expanded rapidly and the scale and pace of the evacuation increased dramatically. Fortunately, orders to evacuate were communicated quickly through a variety of communication methods and as a result many thousands of lives were saved. However, there were also problems that resulted from this rapid and larger-than-expected evacuation; and there were lessons learned that can improve future mass evacuations at Merapi and other volcanoes. We analyzed the results of 1969 questionnaires and conducted a series of interviews with community leaders and emergency officials. Results were compiled for periods both during and after the 2010 eruption. Our results show that: (1) trust in the Indonesian government and volcanologists was very high after the eruption; (2) multiple modes of communication were used to relay warnings and evacuation orders; (3) 50% to 70% of IDPs returned to the danger zone during the crisis despite evacuation orders; (4) preparation before the eruption was critical to the successes and included improvements to roads and education programs, (5) public education about hazards and evacuation protocols before the eruption was focused in the perceived highest danger zone where it was effective yet, confusion and loss of life in other areas demonstrated that education programs in all hazard zones are needed to prepare for larger-than-normal eruptions, and (6) improvements in registration of evacuees, in providing for livestock, and in activities and work programs in evacuation camps (as well as government restrictions and policy changes) are also needed to prevent evacuees from returning to their homes during the crisis period.
Inspired by Eruptions? Eyjafjallajökull and Icelandic Tourism
Mobilities, 2011
The paper deals with the complex meaning of risk for tourism mobilities. The impact of the Eyjafjallajökull eruption on tourism in Iceland is outlined, as well as the response of Icelandic tourist authorities. A survey in June and July 2010 among international tourists in the country revealed that for many the eruption had added considerable depth to their travel experiences. The sense of risk affects the relation between mobile travellers and their destination. The paper also analyses how events such as the eruption can facilitate new paths towards being sensitive to the natural world.
Bulletin of Volcanology, 2012
While the disruption to international air travel caused by the eruption of Iceland's Eyjafjallajökull volcano in 2010 has been well documented, the significant social impacts on local residents from ash fall to the south and east of the crater are less well-known. These impacts and attitudes of impacted residents and emergency managers are the foci of our present study. Prior to and during the eruption, officials worked to protect the local population from the glacial outburst floods (jökulhlaup) that were of primary concern. The success of these endeavours can in part be attributed to a regional evacuation exercise held in March 2006, an exercise that was carried out with respect to a possible eruption at another volcano, Katla, that is located 25 km to the east of Eyjafjallajökull. Eruptions at either volcano will impact the same communities. Our study here concentrates on Álftaver, a small farming community, located approximately 60 km east-southeast of Eyjafjallajökull and 30 km southeast of Katla. Álftaver has been the subject of longitudinal studies carried out in 2004, 2006, and 2008; these studies highlighted the difficulties that emergency managers face in developing appropriate response strategies acceptable to vulnerable communities. The 2010 Eyjafjallajökull eruptions presented an opportunity to re-assess residents' attitudes and behaviour in relation to volcanic risk management in the wake of their firsthand experiences with volcanic hazards. To achieve this, interviews were conducted with residents and emergency management officials and a questionnaire was distributed to residents. This paper presents the results of this survey and examines changes in attitudes towards volcanic risk management. It was apparent that the experience of ash fall from Eyjafjallajökull provided a better perspective of what could be expected from a Katla eruption and that attitudes towards emergency management had evolved accordingly. Importantly, officials' perceptions of risk are now more aligned with those of residents and both recognise the need for more detailed and concise information regarding the impacts of ash fall during and following volcanic eruptions.