Rising from the Ashes: A Governance Perspective on Emerging Systemic Risks
Unpredictable events -like an infrastructure failure such as a blackout (e.g. the 1999 southern Brazil blackout or the northeast blackout of 2003 that occurred in the US and Canada), a large-scale financial crisis with deep consequences on the real economy (e.g. the Icelandic and the Greek crises), a non-conventional terrorist attack (committed with chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear weapons), the risk related to the exploitation of new technologies (typically nanotechnologies), or a geophysical event (as the 2010 volcanic ash crisis or the 2011 Japan earthquake) - may suddenly cause large-scale losses. The knock-on effect of these events grows beyond the direct social and economic impact on a specific geographic area, affecting simultaneously different regions and imposing immediate regulatory answers.
Alice's Adventures in Volcano Land: The Use and Abuse of Expert Knowledge in Safety Regulation
As a volcano refugee in Frankfurt, it was rather interesting to see a slow motion regulatory science disaster taking place. On April 14 2010 the Icelandic volcano Eyjafjallajökull erupted sending millions of tons of ash into the upper atmosphere. The ash cloud, blown by the prevailing winds, moved down over northern Europe. European air traffic authorities, following well established and widely published safety protocols, began shutting down the air transport system due to the well known hazard of volcano ash. The shutdown lasted 6 days and soon became an unequal political contest between airline money on the one side and regulatory science on the other. In a classic case of shooting the messenger bringing bad news the responsible airline parties tried to shift the blame for shutdown to the regulators, while nervous governments quailed before the bullying of the airline executives.
Analyses of in‐situ airborne volcanic ash from the February 2000 eruption of Hekla Volcano, Iceland
A McDonnell‐Douglas DC‐8 NASA research aircraft inadvertently flew into an airborne volcanic ash plume from the 26 February 2000 eruption of Hekla Volcano. Filter samples from the aircraft were compared with “normal use” and “pristine clean” filters using SEM, energy‐dispersive x‐ray spectrometer, and Nicolet FTIR spectrophotometer analyses. These analyses confirm that the DC‐8 encountered airborne volcanic ash from Hekla Volcano. This result is supported by independent onboard heated aerosol observations at the time of the encounter. The analyses further demonstrate the ambiguous nature of the dual band thermal IR (“split window”) method for detecting volcanic ash from the point of view of aviation safety. They also highlight the utility of in situ aircraft filter‐based observations of volcanic aerosols for scientific purposes.