"Science, Education, Mitigation"



Helping people understand their risk from volcanoes is our goal. Volcanoes are unpredictable and have the capacity for incredible destruction and devastation. Volcan Inc. aims to work with those people potentially in the path of such catastrophic events.


Fortunately, there are many agencies and organizations already established to help with volcanic disasters. Unfortunately, however, their support is most often unavailable until after tragedy has already stricken. In this case, life has been lost and property destroyed or damaged.


Mitigation is a word used to describe measures taken to reduce the risk from harm. In order to mitigate, a specific hazard must be identified and the risks must be assessed. Measures can then be taken to reduce those risks to people and property.


In recent times there has been a global trend to mitigate risks from the numerous natural hazards present on our dynamic planet, including those risks posed by active volcanoes. Traditional mitigation efforts tend to focus funding, resources and support primarily on the areas with the greatest populations at risk and the areas with greatest property values. This is an efficient model as it aims to protect the most life and property with the available resources.


Proper mitigation has been successful many times over in the past few decades as has been seen during volcanic crises with recent eruptions in the United States, the Philippines, Japan, and many other countries around the world. These areas all exhibited large populations living in close proximity to the threat of volcanic hazards.


A problem exists with this mitigation efficiency model, however. When targeting areas with large populations living on or near volcanoes, there are smaller communities inhabiting volcanoes with the same deadly potential. Volcanic islands and highly remote volcanoes tend to fall in this category most often. These areas are commonly overlooked and mitigation efforts are not implemented.


There is a need to identify such communities and assist them with volcanic hazard mitigation. This is the basis for our work here at Volcan. We recognize that there is a great demand for our services. We aim to enable the local governments, scientists and communities to actively participate in the reduction of their risk from their volcanoes.


Through collaborative scientific research the volcanic hazards can be identified and monitored. The next step, and most critical to translate that information to those directly at risk so they can understand their situation. The appropriate agencies and organizations can then determine how to mitigate the risk to the people and property.


Science, Education, Mitigation: this is our credo.