Practising an explosive eruption in Iceland: outcomes from a European exercise

Claire Witham,Sara Barsotti,Freysteinn Sigmundsson,Stéphanie Dumont,Björn Oddsson

doi:10.1186/s13617-019-0091-7

Abstract

A 3 day exercise simulating unrest and a large explosive eruption at Katla volcano, Iceland, was conducted in January 2016. A large volume of simulated data based on a complex, but realistic eruption scenario was compiled in advance and then transmitted to exercise participants in near-real time over the course of the exercise. The scenario was designed to test the expertise and procedures of the local institutions in charge of warning and responding to volcanic hazards, namely the volcano observatory, national civil protection, and the local university-science sector, as well as their interactions with the European science community and the London Volcanic Ash Advisory Centre. This exercise was the first of this magnitude and scope in Iceland and has revealed many successful developments introduced since the 2010 Eyjafjallajökull and 2011 Grímsvötn eruptions. Following the exercise, 90% of participants said that they felt better prepared for a future eruption. As with any exercise, it also identified areas where further development is required and improvements can be made to procedures. Seven key recommendations are made to further develop capability and enhance the collaboration between the volcano observatory, volcano research institutions and civil protection authorities. These recommendations cover topics including notification of responders, authoritative messaging, data sharing and media interaction, and are more broadly applicable to volcanic institutions elsewhere. Lessons and suggestions for how to run a large-scale volcanic exercise are given and could be adopted by those planning to rehearse their own response procedures.

Highlights

Practising and testing emergency procedures are fundamental for ensuring effective responses in operational environments during real crises
In order to evaluate the success and the efficacy of the exercise a structured debriefing was performed. This involved a cross-organisational debriefing, an evaluation of the exercise by the exercise coordination team, a debriefing at each local institution and the dissemination of a Results The scope and scale of a three-day exercise provided an unprecedented test of response procedures allowing the identification of gaps and areas of possible improvement for a contingency plan for Iceland that includes foreign institutions
90% said that they felt better prepared for the Icelandic eruption as a result of the exercise and 74% responded that their institution will do something differently as a consequence of the exercise, demonstrating a constructive outcome in terms of modifying behaviours and procedures

Summary

Introduction

Practising and testing emergency procedures are fundamental for ensuring effective responses in operational environments during real crises. The practice of running exercises is common in many disciplines where crises management procedures need to be in place to react to possible emergencies, for example in civil protection, hospitals, the emergency services, and the nuclear power industry (Hart 1997; Lakey et al 1983; Larsson et al 2015; Kim 2013; Kim 2014; Payne 1999; Berlin and Carlström 2011, 2015) In these fields, Collaboration exercises can have many benefits, including testing how the overall response works, identifying problems due to overlaps in responsibilities, testing. It is important that one of the main drivers of an exercise is to detect loop-holes, errors, oversights and other problems (Hart 1997)

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