The first two Meetings of Latin American Volcano Observatories (Encuentro de Observatorios Vulcanológicos de Latinoamérica)

RODRÍGUEZ, L.A.; FORTE, P.; RIVERA, M.; AGUSTO, M.; DELGADO, H.; PALMA, J.L.; MARIÑO, J.; SAMANIEGO, P.; MACEDO, L.; WRIGHT, H.

Nápoles

Conferencia; Cities on Volcanoes 10; 2018

IAVCEI

The Latin American Association of Volcanology (ALVO), together with Peru?s INGEMMET Volcano Observatory and the USGS Volcano Disaster Assistance Program organized the first two Meetings of Latin American Volcano Observatories. Held in Arequipa (Perú) in 2015 and 2018, and with the institutional support of IAVCEI and WOVO, these events gathered the volcano observatory representatives from Latin America. In both opportunities, the meetings had a duration of two days and the program was divided in thematic sessions, with oral presentations, group activities, and discussions. The first meeting took place on October 12-13, 2015 and had about 70 participants from 23 institutions and 8 countries. It was focused on learning about advancement and innovations in the institutions, exchanging experiences in volcanic crisis management, and discussing the challenges that the observatories face, together with limitations and difficulties. The 2018 meeting, on April 23-24, had about 50 participants from 18 institutions and 11 countries. This time, the focus was on exchanging recent experiences on crisis management, debating on effective communication strategies, and on strengthening cooperation in topics like training, instrumentation, processing and interpretation of data. The main session was dedicated to the development of guidelines for emergency protocols. For that, a group activity was carried out, in which the observatories shared the existing protocols, and their contents were analysed and discussed. The group discussions will be used to develop summary documents that will be shared with the participants, in order for them to revise their existing protocols or to develop new ones. In this work, we summarize the key points of both meetings and present the results and main challenges identified during them. Some of the results and conclusions have been gathered through questionnaires, which were developed for both meetings in order to have the direct input from the participants on important points discussed.