Volcanic Ash Monitoring and FOrecaSting between Sicilia and Malta arEa and sharinG of the resUlts foR aviatiOn safety
Volcanic clouds disperse a great amount of volcanic ash that constitutes a great hazard to aviation. The accidental encounter between volcanic ash and airplanes causes damages to control surfaces, windshields and landing lights, loss of visibility and failure of critical navigational and operation instrumentations and in the worst case the failure of the engine. It is hence very important to define and forecast the region, which will be interested by the presence of volcanic ash in the case of explosive activity. The project will realize an automatic system for the monitoring and forecasting of volcanic ash dispersal between Sicily and Malta. New instruments will be installed and they will be able to gather important data on explosive activity and on volcanic particles and the use of tephra dispersal models will be able to forecast the locations and the height of the volcanic clouds. The developed system will be able to inspect the region between Sicily and Malta in which there will be a high probability to find dangerous concentration of volcanic ash and gas, and will produce alert systems highlighting the regions that will be interdicted to aviation. Results will be available to authorities and, giving also information of the tephra deposit, they will be very useful to community, social and productive activities of the interested areas.