The Fluid Mechanics of Volcanic Hazards (26w5593)

The Banff International Research Station will host the "The Fluid Mechanics of Volcanic Hazards" workshop in Banff from October 25 to October 30, 2026.

Volcanic eruptions generate some of the largest natural hazards on earth with the potential to threaten lives and livelihoods. The recent past has featured events that have re-emphasised the risk to populations close to individual volcanoes as well the global impact of eruptions, including long-lived perturbations to the climate. Global impacts resulted from the eruptions of Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha'apai in 2022, which caused fatalities in Peru, more than 10,000km away; and Eyjafjallajökull in 2010, which resulted in cancellation of nearly half of all European flights at a cost of 1.7 billion USD. The greatest impact, however, is on developing countries: in the 21st century, eruptions in Indonesia, Guatamala, the Phillipines and DR Congo have killed hundreds of people and displaced hundreds of thousands more.

Most volcanic hazards --- from lava and pyroclastic flows to ash and gas clouds --- are fundamentally multiphase fluid flows. Predicting these fluid flows is of considerable importance in order to inform quantitative hazard assessment, including, for example, potential evacuation and exclusion zones during eruptions. Although recent advances in remote sensing offer some remarkable new insights into the dynamics, these hazardous fluid flows can be difficult to measure directly. Predictive mathematical models therefore play a vital role in allowing forecasters make robust operational decisions. This is the theme of our proposed workshop: the fluid mechanics of volcanic hazards.

During the workshop we will focus on the development of predictive models, and the key mathematical challenges of constructing quantitative models which are faithful to underlying physical processes that control eruptive events. These models do more than just quantify risk; they enable the fundamental physical mechanisms that control the flows to be probed theoretically, revealing competing nonlinear interplay of processes, and so provide fundamental understanding that is impossible to deduce empirically.

The Banff International Research Station for Mathematical Innovation and Discovery (BIRS) is a collaborative Canada-US-Mexico venture that provides an environment for creative interaction as well as the exchange of ideas, knowledge, and methods within the Mathematical Sciences, with related disciplines and with industry. The research station is located at The Banff Centre in Alberta and is supported by Canada's Natural Science and Engineering Research Council (NSERC), the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) and Alberta's Technology and Innovation.