About 10 percent of the world's population lives in the vicinity of one of the planet's approximately 1500 active volcanoes. These volcanoes represent a large threat to human lives and regional economies, especially in highly-populated areas. This makes effective and reliable volcanic hazard mitigation absolutely mandatory.
Because volcanoes are complex systems, hazard mitigation can be achieved only by applying numerous techniques, such as geophysical monitoring, thorough mapping of previous activity and numerical simulations of different eruption scenarios.