{"id":1234,"date":"2021-06-16T08:26:29","date_gmt":"2021-06-16T07:26:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/research.reading.ac.uk\/meteorology-aviation\/?page_id=1234"},"modified":"2021-07-12T13:01:52","modified_gmt":"2021-07-12T12:01:52","slug":"vdart-red","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/research.reading.ac.uk\/meteorology-aviation\/vdart-red\/","title":{"rendered":"VDART-RED: Volcanic Dosage and Risk Tool – RaikokE case study Development"},"content":{"rendered":"
In the event of a volcanic eruption, policy and regulations are in place to ensure airborne\naircraft land safely and to guide flight planning decisions. More than 6,000 flights and over 650,000 passengers pass\nthrough UK airspace each day. \nDuring Icelandic volcanic eruptions the London Volcanic Ash Advisory Center (VAAC) produces forecasts of ash location and concentration. These VAAC\nforecasts are used to decide where it is safe to fly. There are, however, several\nproblems with these forecasts. Firstly, they do not allow the airline operators to easily estimate along-\nflight ash dosage (the quantity used to define engine tolerance). Secondly, they do not take\ninto account the uncertainty in the forecasts due to incomplete knowledge of the eruption\ncharacteristics and imperfect representation of atmospheric processes in numerical models.\nThus, the decision makers within the airline industry have incomplete information regarding the risk of flying when there is\nvolcanic ash present in UK air-space. \n
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\nThere is a need for a new generation of volcanic ash\nhazard charts that are based on risk estimates determined by combining state-of-the-art\nprobabilistic forecast methods and en-gine dosage tolerance information. These charts will\nallow the relevant authorities to develop policy based on estimates of along-flight ash dosage for planned\nflight-paths and to manage the risk of exposure to volcanic ash. \n
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\nTo demonstrate the value\nof these charts we will further develop a proof-of-concept tool developed at the University\nof Reading the Volcanic Dosage And Risk Tool (VDART)<\/a> \n\tby simulating a real volcanic eruption (Raikoke,\n2019), evaluating the simulations for Raikoke using satellite observations to optimise the\nuse of multiple plausible realisations and estimating how flight routes would be affected if\nthe risk-based approach were used to make flight planning decisions for Raikoke 2019.\nThese are crucial next steps in developing an operational product.\n\n

Application to Raikoke case study<\/h3>\n\n