Probabilistic hazard from pyroclastic density currents in the Neapolitan Area (Southern Italy)

Sandri, Laura; Tierz Lopez, Pablo; Costa, Antonio; Marzocchi, Warner. 2018 Probabilistic hazard from pyroclastic density currents in the Neapolitan Area (Southern Italy). Journal of Geophysical Research: Solid Earth, 123 (5). 3474-3500. https://doi.org/10.1002/2017JB014890

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Official URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/2017JB014890

Abstract/Summary

The metropolitan area of Napoli (∼3 M inhabitants) in southern Italy is located in between two explosive active volcanoes: Somma‐Vesuvius and Campi Flegrei. Pyroclastic density currents (PDCs) from these volcanoes may reach the city center, as witnessed by the Late Quaternary stratigraphic record. Here we compute a novel multivolcano Probabilistic Volcanic Hazard Assessment of PDCs, in the next 50 years, by combining the probability of PDC invasion from each volcano (assuming that they erupt independently) over the city of Napoli and its surroundings. We model PDC invasion with the energy cone model accounting for flows of very different (but realistic) mobility and use the Bayesian Event Tree for Volcanic Hazard to incorporate other volcano‐specific information such as the probability of eruption or the spatial variability in vent opening probability. Worthy of note, the method provides a complete description of Probabilistic Volcanic Hazard Assessment, that is, it yields percentile maps displaying the epistemic uncertainty associated with our best (aleatory) hazard estimation. Since the probability density functions of the model parameters of the energy cone are unknown, we propose an ensemble of different hazard assessments based on different assumptions on such probability density functions. The ensemble merges two plausible distributions for the collapse height, reflecting a source of epistemic (specifically, parametric) uncertainty. We also apply a novel quantification for a spatially varying epistemic uncertainty associated to PDC simulations.

Item Type:	Publication - Article
Digital Object Identifier (DOI):	https://doi.org/10.1002/2017JB014890
ISSN:	21699313
Date made live:	13 Nov 2018 16:15 +0 (UTC)
URI:	https://nora.nerc.ac.uk/id/eprint/521501

Item Type:

Publication - Article

Digital Object Identifier (DOI):

https://doi.org/10.1002/2017JB014890

ISSN:

21699313

Date made live:

13 Nov 2018 16:15 +0 (UTC)

URI:

https://nora.nerc.ac.uk/id/eprint/521501