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Table 2 Evidence of the practical realities faced by volcanic hazard assessors at the hazard-risk interface

From: Hazard communication by volcanologists: part 2 - quality standards for volcanic hazard assessments

Issue

Summary

Source

The nature of the interface

There exists the possibility of a blurring of the distinction between advisory and decision-making functions, and the danger of the distortion of scientific evidential inputs treacherous because “strong tensions arise” and “a neat demarcation between scientific evidence, societal values and beliefs, economic considerations and policy-decisions is not always easy”.

OECD 2015, 13

Roles of stakeholders at the interface

The roles of scientific experts, decision-makers and hazard assessments at the interface are increasingly important but lack of clarity in legal and functional terms and this may have profound consequences in terms of maintaining credibility and accountability.

When juggling societal and political pressures, and faced with uncertainty, decision-makers may prefer certainty, precision and accuracy, and seek agreement and unambiguous consensus from advising experts. They may be tempted to divert some of their responsibilities onto the shoulders of the experts, and require scientists to undertake an extended role that embraces answering questions covering a wide range of response management issues and providing more than Mode-1 science.

Scientific experts, who lack clarity regarding their advisory and decision-making responsibilities, may feel the need to express their personal views on what action should be taken by decision-makers, overstepping their scientific advisory role.a

Donovan and Oppenheimer 2012, 2014; Bretton et al. 2015; Scolobig 2015; OECD 2015.

Voight 1996; Peterson 1996; US/NRC 1996; McGuire and Kilburn 1997; Paton et al. 1998, 1999; WBGU 2000; Francis and Oppenheimer 2004; Solana et al. 2008; Aspinall 2011; Donovan and Oppenheimer 2012; Hincks et al. 2014; Jolly and Cronin 2014; Doyle et al. 2015; Komorowski et al. 2015; Papale 2017.

Operational demands and weaknesses of decision-makers

A loss of traditional management capabilities can sometimes be attributed to mobility and cultural de-rooting.

Few civil protection authorities have any experience of eruptions.

The timescales of scientific expertise and concern are sometimes out of sync with the timescales of political expertise and expediency and the widespread practice of quick rotation in critical roles and responsibilities can create a major hindrance to the possibility of establishing such fruitful relationships between scientists and decision-makers.

WBGU 2000; Solana et al. 2008; Donovan and Oppenheimer 2012; Mothes et al. 2015; Papale 2017

The issuance of volcano alert levels (VAL) may involve both hazard-related and other factors.

VAL are issued to provide information about volcanic hazards. They may reflect more than the true status of the hazard and their issuance may involve both hazard-related and other factors. Hazard-related factors include: (1) monitoring networks, equipment and levels; (2) volcano type and eruption style; and (3) the scientists’ experience of (2). Other factors that may be “very large”, create a potential bias, and lead to a low number of alerts, include (1) the size of potential societal exposure (i.e. population size); (2) the risk aversion of individual scientists (i.e. “an optimum risk management perspective” to avoid consequences such as undue public concern and slow tourist arrivals; and (3) the personal interests of scientists including the risk of lost reputation.

VAL have been: (1) influenced by risk considerations (i.e. local environmental and social contexts, and economic and other values; (2) adjusted for ‘strategic’ and ‘tactical’ reasons to influence resulting risk-mitigation decisions; and (3) driven by ‘institutional’ risk pressures including observatory level debates about ways to ensure ‘professionalism’, the temptation to be ‘conservative’ (avoiding the risk of being wrong by delaying alert changes until there is real certainty of prognosis), and a desire to make decisions that are defendable to ‘peers and the government’.

Winson et al. 2014, 10

Solana et al. 2008; Fearnley 2013;

Social, political and commercial pressures

The Eyjafjallajökull ash cloud that swept across Europe in 2010 highlighted the vulnerability of scientists to powerful political and commercial influences.b

Risk governance requires the involvement of both scientists and risk managers but “some scientists are uncomfortable participating in processes that are influenced (if not dominated) by social, economic, and political factors”.

A wide range of stakeholders may attempt through “subtle dependences” to influence unbiased scientific assessments. They include government officials (e.g. the governor of a small volcanic island), a hotel owner, the good friend living on the boundary of an exclusion zone and aggressive local residents.c)

International Air Transport Association (IATA) 2010: Macrae 2011; Neuberg 2015, 308

Personal factors

When boundaries [separating the roles of scientists and decision-makers] are not guaranteed, assessments by volcanologists may be consciously or sub-consciously biased by their own social and political evaluations.

Papale 2017, 4

Consequences of many formal and informal demands and pressures

The anxieties and the emotional and personal responses of scientists.

In the context of the eruptions on Montserrat between 1995 and 2010, reference has been made to “an intense period of negotiation between scientists, policy makers and the public”. This negotiation “concerned lives, livelihoods, political motivations, colonial tensions, scientific interpretations, institutional differences and local culture”.d)

Years before L’Aquila, in response to the ‘anxiety’ of scientists in Montserrat concerning their liability, there was a perceived need to mitigate managerial risks..e

In the context of the legal framework and scientific responsibilities during the El Hierro eruptions between 2011 and 2014, a combination of many factors “sometimes leads to severe pressure [on] the scientific decision-making process that is patently excessive and can adversely affect the scientists’ conclusions and decisions.”f

Scientists fearing criminal prosecution g might change their behaviour.h

Hadfield 1993; Aspinall and Cooke 1998; Donovan and Oppenheimer 2014;

Marrero et al. 2015, 3;

OECD 2015

  1. a In many countries, it is not the responsibility of scientists to call an evacuation or manage a crisis (Hincks et al. 2014; Komorowski et al. 2015). However, in order to provide “science-based decision support”, there is an increasing requirement to provide wider scientific information about volcanic hazards and associated uncertainties, and to assess risks “in ways that enable public officials to make urgent evacuation decisions or other mitigation policy choices” (Hincks et al. 2014, 2, 22)
  2. b In the context of the Eyjafjallajökull ash cloud that swept across Europe in 2010 disrupting 100,000 flights globally and causing the airline industry an economic loss of over $3bn (IATA 2010), Macrae (2011) identified no less than 11 risk actors within the “risk landscape of the ash cloud”. He highlighted the vulnerability of scientists to powerful political and commercial influences and identified no less than 11 risk actors within the “risk landscape of the ash cloud”. “However, [the scientists] would have been naïve to believe that others [risk managers] would not try to place the [risk] assessment on them and push them towards predicting an outcome, one way or another. The volcanologists could give their best view of the nature of the ash and meteorologists their forecast of dispersal. Sooner or later, there would have been pressure on the grey area between the boundary of the cloud. Even if there were truly no safe level of ash, there had to be a boundary somewhere between clear skies and cloud. That would be the wedge to be driven into the scientific assessment” (Macrae 2011, 21)
  3. c “However, when dealing with people directly during volcanic risk assessment, there are more subtle dependences at play: a governor of a small volcanic island who might have a say in the future existence of an advisory panel you are on; a hotel owner, and good friend, whose property is located at the boundary of an exclusion zone; the owner of the villa who saved up money all his working life for the retirement home in the Caribbean, which he cannot reach now because it is located just beyond the evacuation line; or the resident of Montserrat who aggressively accused me, the scientist, not the volcano, of ruining the island! How tempting and easy would it be to please these people by shifting the results of a risk assessment ever so slightly. Hence, it is sometimes not that straightforward to stick to an unbiased opinion and not to care about the consequences; but we must, because the volcano does not care about those either” (Neuberg 2015, 308)
  4. d Scientists have emotional and personal responses to disasters and to the pressure of the public and political demand for knowledge that does not exist. This context can present challenges in communication, especially where a third party is mediating information (as occurred in early eruptions) (Donovan and Oppenheimer 2014, 159)
  5. e Donovan and Oppenheimer (2014) argue that, to gain greater protection from liability, the reports of Montserrat Scientific Advisory Committee after 2002 were more formal and contained a disclaimer pointing to the government’s legal responsibility for its own risk-mitigation decisions
  6. f Marrero et al. (2015, 4) refer to “the pressure exerted by public authorities and officials…especially if those authorities are not prepared or willing the deal with the human and economic consequences of such decisions”
  7. g Citing Hadfield (1993), Aspinall and Cooke (1998, 2) noted “in one recent incident, an official geologist was threatened with criminal action for failure to predict a small but fatal eruption”
  8. h The risk of being personally prosecuted (personal prosecution, even if unsuccessful, can be financially and professionally crippling) may lead to behavioural changes that substantially affect the functioning of science advisory systems. This can affect, in particular, those scientific experts who are not directly employed by government, and for whom legal liability is unclear. Precautionary or defensive behaviour in recent years includes resignations from office of highly qualified personnel (or refusal to take such responsibility), fragmentation of mandates to dilute responsibilities, suppression of dedicated advisory services to reduce liabilities, and more globally an “advice chill”. With an emphasis on caution, the value of scientific advice, not only in risk assessment but also in many other areas, can be seriously weakened (OECD 2015, 28)
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Journal of Applied Volcanology

ISSN: 2191-5040

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