FEATURES
EUROVOLC
▶ FIG . 2 : page of the EUROVOLC citizen-science tool showing the location and number of observations available in diverse regions
▼ FIG . 3 : a screenshot of the EUROVOLC citizen-science tool showing also information from the European Catalogue of Volcanoes
26 EPN 54 / 2 as online questionnaires or apps , for facilitating the collection of data by citizens ( Stevenson et al , 2012 ; 2013 ). However , at the time of EUROVOLC project , these efforts had been fragmented and sparse across Europe , with different tools developed , or under development ( Figure 1 ):
• the app ‘ myVolcano ’ developed by the British Geological Survey in UK ( Duncan et al ., 2017 and https :// www . bgs . ac . uk / myVolcano /)
• two online questionnaires to collect observations on SO 2 and volcanic tephra , respectively , developed by the Icelandic Meteorological Office in Iceland ( https :// www . vedur . is / skraning _ brennisteinsmengun / and http :// skraning . v edur . is / skra / osku /)
• two tools developed by Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia in Italy : one online questionnaire set up by Osservatorio Vesuviano in Naples to collect any kind of observations of the activity of Neapolitan volcanoes , and an app ‘ Tefranet ’ under development in Osservatorio Etneo in Catania ( Andronico et al , 2015 ) to collect observations of volcanic tephra from Mt Etna in Sicily
• an online questionnaire developed by the Instituto de Investigação em Vulcanologia e Avaliação de Riscos in Portugal to collect observations for Azores volcanoes ( http :// www . ivar . azores . gov . pt / no-navigation / Paginas / comunicacao-ocorrencias . aspx ).
EUROVOLC project
The European Network of Observatories and Research Infrastructures for Volcanology ( EUROVOLC ) project 2018 - 2021 was funded by the European Union . Its main goal was to facilitate communication and integration within the European volcanological community , bringing together the wide range of disciplines necessary for effective volcanic research , and prompting collaborative research among partners , development of best practices , networking between research institutes , volcano observatories , civil protection and Volcanic Ash Advisory Centres , and developing training resources for the public and young researchers .
Among specific objectives of the projects , the development of common procedures and the raising of awareness on volcanic risk among citizens , fuelled the set up of a common citizen science tool to collect , map and make available observations from people witnessing volcanic events at European volcanoes either in continental Europe or overseas territories .
EUROVOLC citizen-science tool
To implement this service , we decided to develop the tool as a web page , adaptive to mobile phone format , for ease of maintenance .
Operatively , the first focus was to run a reconnaissance survey of the different national citizen-science tools already online to look for differences and similarities . Overall , these tools covered diverse volcanic hazards or phenomena , with observations ranging from gas to tephra , earthquakes or explosions , for example . However , some common features were stored by all the tools : the timing ( day and hour ), the location , a description of the volcanic event , and the possibility to upload pictures or video ( Figure 1 ). Our goal was to merge the large amount of observations already stored and scattered in different databases and make them accessible through a single portal .