The Seis­mic Re­search Cen­tre of The Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI SRC), lo­cat­ed at the St Au­gus­tine Cam­pus, has re­ceived glob­al ac­claim for its han­dling of the erup­tion of the La Soufrière in St Vin­cent and The Grenadines.

A re­lease from the or­gan­i­sa­tion re­ports that UWI-SRC was an­nounced as win­ner of the 2022 Vol­canic Sur­veil­lance and Cri­sis Man­age­ment Award, pre­sent­ed by the In­ter­na­tion­al As­so­ci­a­tion of Vol­canol­o­gy and Chem­istry of the Earth’s In­te­ri­or (IAV­CEI) on Thurs­day 16 June 2022.

The IAV­CEI is the world’s lead­ing glob­al vol­canolog­i­cal as­so­ci­a­tion.

Di­rec­tor of the UWI SRC, Dr Er­ous­cil­la Joseph ac­cept­ed the award in Her­ak­lion, Greece, dur­ing the As­so­ci­a­tion’s 11th Cities on Vol­ca­noes Con­fer­ence (COV11).

“The pres­ti­gious, peer-nom­i­nat­ed ac­co­lade, award­ed bi­en­ni­al­ly, recog­nis­es the Caribbean team of ex­perts at the UWI SRC for its out­stand­ing man­age­ment of the 2020-2021 erup­tion of La Soufrière in St Vin­cent and The Grenadines,” the UWI-SRC state­ment said.

“The nom­i­na­tion was based pri­mar­i­ly on The UWI SRC’s re­sponse, made par­tic­u­lar­ly chal­leng­ing with­in the con­text of the glob­al pan­dem­ic,” it added.

Due to UWI-SRC’s state-of-the-art mon­i­tor­ing tech­niques, ro­bust part­ner­ships and time­ly com­mu­ni­ca­tion with stake­hold­ers, ap­prox­i­mate­ly 16,000 peo­ple were evac­u­at­ed ahead of the ex­plo­sive phase with no re­port­ed se­ri­ous in­juries or ca­su­al­ties.

Ac­cord­ing to the re­lease, a team com­pris­ing ex­perts from UWI-SRC and the Montser­rat Vol­cano Ob­ser­va­to­ry was the first among a ro­ta­tion of sev­er­al sci­en­tif­ic teams de­ployed to St. Vin­cent from De­cem­ber 2020, fol­low­ing the con­fir­ma­tion of new dome growth de­tect­ed by SRC sci­en­tists us­ing NASA satel­lite im­agery. Dome growth at the vol­cano sig­nalled the be­gin­ning of an ef­fu­sive erup­tion, which es­ca­lat­ed to an ex­plo­sive phase in April 2021.

In ad­di­tion to lead­ing the sci­ence through mon­i­tor­ing, re­search­ing, ed­u­cat­ing, and ad­vis­ing, the UWI SRC al­so has been pro­vid­ing crit­i­cal com­mu­ni­ca­tions re­sponse that has re­ceived com­men­da­tion from the in­ter­na­tion­al vol­canolog­i­cal com­mu­ni­ty. Lead­ing up to, and through­out La Soufrière’s ex­plo­sive phase, UWI SRC worked close­ly with the coun­try’s Na­tion­al Emer­gency Man­age­ment Or­gan­i­sa­tion (NEMO) to help the Gov­ern­ment and its agen­cies in risk com­mu­ni­ca­tion in ad­di­tion to shap­ing pub­lic pol­i­cy and re­sponse plans. Ma­jor vol­canic ash­fall cov­ered most of main­land St. Vin­cent and neigh­bour­ing is­lands, most no­tably Bar­ba­dos among oth­er haz­ards.

“This Award, pre­vi­ous­ly at­trib­uted to vol­cano In­sti­tutes in In­done­sia (2018), then Ecuador (2020), recog­nis­es and ho­n­ours the re­mark­able role UWI-SRC has played for al­most 70 years in mon­i­tor­ing ac­tive vol­ca­noes in the Caribbean is­land arc, and in re­spond­ing to vol­cano-seis­mic crises that oc­curred in this re­gion, es­pe­cial­ly the Soufrière Hills erup­tion on Mon­ser­rat (1995-present) then the Plin­ian erup­tive events at La Soufrière of St Vin­cent in 2020-2021,” said Pres­i­dent of the IAV­CEI, Dr Patrick Al­lard.

Dr Al­lard added: “The suc­cess­es achieved by the UWI SRC dur­ing these events—in terms of sci­en­tif­ic mon­i­tor­ing, haz­ard as­sess­ment and even co-man­age­ment of emer­gency re­sponse—in a con­text of lim­it­ed re­sources avail­able, are ful­ly ac­knowl­edged by the in­ter­na­tion­al vol­canolog­i­cal com­mu­ni­ty and well de­serve this 2022 award­ing.”

Dr Er­ous­cil­la Joseph and oth­er UWI SRC staff mem­bers par­tic­i­pat­ed in sci­en­tif­ic ses­sions and work­shops at the re­cent COV11 con­fer­ence in Greece.

In re­sponse to the award, she com­mend­ed the IAV­CEI for sup­port­ing un­der-re­sourced agen­cies of the Glob­al South.

“The op­er­a­tions of the UWI SRC are es­sen­tial for the con­tin­ued mon­i­tor­ing of the low fre­quen­cy, high im­pact geo­phys­i­cal haz­ards af­fect­ing the Caribbean,” Dr Joseph ob­served.  “The is­sue of sig­nif­i­cant fi­nan­cial chal­lenges posed by in­con­sis­tent and in­ad­e­quate fund­ing from con­tribut­ing ter­ri­to­ries is a long­stand­ing one that has re­sult­ed in an­nu­al bud­get cuts over the past ten years, which have con­sid­er­ably im­pact­ed the strength of our mon­i­tor­ing and ad­vi­so­ry ca­pa­bil­i­ty.”

Dr Joseph not­ed that the suc­cess­ful man­age­ment of the erup­tion stemmed from the UWI-SRC’s long­stand­ing part­ner­ship with re­gion­al au­thor­i­ties, and its com­mit­ment to serv­ing the re­gion as part of the broad­er man­date of The Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies.

“The re­sponse to the erup­tion of La Soufrière is a re­flec­tion of the hard work, ex­per­tise and com­mit­ment of all staff who worked tire­less­ly through­out the erup­tion some of whom, of­ten put their own lives at risk be­cause we were con­scious that peo­ple’s lives and liveli­hoods would be af­fect­ed,” Dr. Joseph point­ed out.

Vice-Chan­cel­lor of The UWI, Pro­fes­sor Sir Hi­lary Beck­les, con­grat­u­lat­ed the UWI SRC, not­ing he is par­tic­u­lar­ly proud of the “ONE UWI” sci­en­tif­ic ca­pac­i­ty and re­sponse strat­e­gy of the Cen­tre, which is fund­ed and sup­port­ed through the Uni­ver­si­ty’s Re­gion­al Head­quar­ters.

“Our Seis­mic Re­search Cen­tre is a demon­stra­tion of har­ness­ing The UWI’s man­date of ser­vice in ac­tion to the re­gion,” Pro­fes­sor Sir Hi­lary Beck­les said.  “We are tru­ly en­cour­aged to have this in­ter­na­tion­al recog­ni­tion for the Cen­tre’s work, as yet an­oth­er sig­nal of our achieve­ments as a glob­al uni­ver­si­ty root­ed in the Caribbean, re­mark­ably punch­ing above our weight.”

The UWI SRC al­so re­ceived con­grat­u­la­to­ry mes­sages from mem­bers of the vol­canolog­i­cal com­mu­ni­ty around the world.

“What UWI SRC achieved with its avail­able re­sources as the erup­tion rapid­ly tran­si­tioned from dome build­ing to ex­plo­sive phas­es is noth­ing short of ex­tra­or­di­nary. This award is an op­por­tu­ni­ty to recog­nise not on­ly the fan­tas­tic work that UWI SRC did dur­ing the erup­tion at Soufrière, but al­so the lev­el of re­spect it gath­ered from around the world,” stat­ed Dr Nico­las Fournier, Vol­canol­o­gy Team Leader at GNS Sci­ence (New Zealand), and mem­ber of the peer-nom­i­na­tion pan­el.

“This com­bi­na­tion of [UWI-SRC’s] ex­cel­lent, ded­i­cat­ed mon­i­tor­ing, hard phys­i­cal work and in­ven­tive and em­pa­thet­ic ap­proach­es to com­mu­ni­ca­tion in no small way con­tributed to the rapid way in which the au­thor­i­ties and com­mu­ni­ties moved from ad­vice to ac­tion dur­ing that mo­ment on April 8, be­fore ex­plo­sions start­ed,” stat­ed Pro­fes­sor Jen­ni Bar­clay, Vol­ca­nol­o­gist at Uni­ver­si­ty of East An­glia in the UK, and mem­ber of the peer-nom­i­na­tion pan­el.

Pro­fes­sor Bar­clay added: “What set (UWI) SRC’s ef­fort apart was the fan­tas­tic lev­el of com­mu­ni­ca­tion they pro­vid­ed both to the gov­ern­ment agen­cies and the pub­lic and com­mu­ni­ties of St. Vin­cent.”— (The UWI SRC)