ABSTRACT
At a time when global population growth is exposing more and more communities to volcanic hazards, an expanding body of work is being dedicated to lessen the impacts of major eruptions. A trend has been identified that shows a shift away from pure Earth scientists simply attempting to understand how and when eruptions occur, towards a more integrated and applied approach of risk management involving volcanologists, social scientists, emergency planners, local communities and others (Aguirre and Ahearn, 2007). The catalyst for this shift was a series of significant eruptions in the final decades of the 20th century and a focusing of minds through the UN declaration in the 1990s of an International Decade for Natural Disaster Reduction (Chester et al, 2002).
