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The USAID project – Collaborative Risk Assessment for Volcanoes and Earthquakes or CRAVE successfully kicked off with a workshop in Bogota, Colombia on February 22-23, 2018. Participants came from the British Geological Survey, the Volcano Disaster Assistance Program (VDAP) of the United States Geological Survey (USGS), the Colombian Geological Survey and the Rabaul Volcano Observatory of Papua New Guinea. The project also includes the participation of the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology (PHIVOLCS), the Earth Observatory of Singapore (EOS) and the University of Edinburgh. 

The kickoff meeting covered several topics, including the identification of relevant hazard and risk information for decision-makers, data needs for volcano and earthquake hazard assessment in the pilot areas (Colombia and Papua New Guinea), challenges in the harmonization of software, models and datasets, and available modeling tools for the assessment of the impact from these geo-hazards. 

Marta Cavalche of SGC highlighted the importance of expanding the assessment beyond hazard after a discussion that most of the available assessment software is only for hazard. The project anticipates that communicating earthquake and volcanic risk can be a challenging task due to other competing social issues, and the lack of resources. However, Vitor Silva of the GEM Foundation points out that “When resources are limited, and they are always limited, we cannot afford to tackle one problem at a time. A multi-hazard and multi-disciplinary approach to disaster risk reduction better utilizes available resources.” 

Despite several aspects that need to be addressed such deciding on a uniform assessment framework, data format, and data availability, participants identified points of common work, as well as strategies to achieve the objectives set by the project. CRAVE is funded by USAID and will run for 18 months to develop a common framework for the assessment of the impact from earthquakes and volcanoes, with an application to a few locations in the Philippines, Papua New Guinea and Colombia.The kickoff meeting also appeared on SGC’s website article: Reunión inicial del proyecto CRAVE.