During the AGU Meeting we had a Volcano Geodesy meetup (in two parts to accommodate so many time zones!). Thank you for joining, if you were able, and here we provide notes in case you were not able. It was attended by 25 members from at least 6 time zones!
We started by discussing about how to replace the planned Volcano Geodesy meeting that had been scheduled for October 2020 and was cancelled by covid. There seemed to be an interest of going ahead with some kind of virtual meeting or exercise, with the hope that we would be able to have an in-person meeting next year or, at least, as soon as the pandemic conditions will re-allow travelling.
Modeling exercise:
The general consensus was that a modeling exercise would be useful for the community, for testing and understanding the differences among the different approaches. It would be best to start simple (likely synthetic model) and add complexity (moving to a real data set) as we work out the mechanics of arranging an exercise. Some important considerations that were brought up include:
– Making sure we are clear about the assumptions going into the model, and start simply
– It would be good to discuss the results in person, but since we don’t know when that will be possible, we might be able to start virtually with the simple model.
– There are some existing synthetic data sets available, and it might be good to make a step-wise approach to starting very simply, and then expanding the scope of complexity.
There have been other exercises for similar collaboration and communication. If you have examples please share, but for one, here is a link to the results of the Southern California Earthquake Center transient detection exercise: https://pubs.geoscienceworld.org/ssa/srl/article-abstract/84/3/419/143995/The-SCEC-Geodetic-Transient-Detection-Validation?redirectedFrom=fulltext
We plan, with some volunteers (some volunteered during the meetup, but we are happy for more if you contact us!), to begin organizing a simple, virtual modeling exercise. We can present and discuss results virtually, with the future goal of having a more complex modeling exercise and in-person discussion.
Alex and I also brought up that because we do not have official bylaws yet, the terms for co-chairs are not explicit, but was casually thought to be 2 years. We are happy to stay on until we are through the pandemic, but please let us (or another messenger) know if you want to volunteer or nominate someone for one of the chair positions.
Also, we thank Marco Bagnardi for his service as Secretary, but since he has moved on to a different field, we are again looking for a Commission Secretary to help with the website. The website crashed and have just been rebuild with its essential structure (https://volcgeodesy.iavceivolcano.org). Now, it needs to be re-populated with news and everything interesting for our community. It could be a good platform for advertising our activities, papers, sessions and everything else, to be further promoted on our social accounts (facebook and twitter). Especially in this covid-conditioned period, web and social pages can play an important role. It is not a big job if everybody keeps in mind to exploit this opportunity, cooperating in producing interesting contents, and if you, and/or a student are interested in helping managing it!