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Fig. 3.
Hazard map of the study area based on the 25740 simulations. As a compromise between
map readability and accuracy, 5 classes are reported (grey colouring), in increasing order of sus-
ceptibility (probability of lava invasion).
a major infrastructure. In this case, this application is rapidly accomplished by querying
the simulation database, by selecting the lava flows that affect the area of interest and by
circumscribing their sources. For this application we have chosen the town of Belpasso,
an important historical and cultural site, with many administrative buildings and tourist
facilities. Figure 4 show vents which can originate eruptions capable of affecting the
urban areas of Belpasso, together with the resulting hazard scenario, allowing to im-
mediately assess the threat posed by an eruption exclusively on the basis of its source
location. While the previous application localizes craters that can originate events that
may interest an inhabited area, the one reported in Figure 5 can have even more impact
in land use planning, referred for the entire town district of Zafferana Etnea, another im-
portant inhabited area of the volcano. This application is fundamental in understanding
how local authorities can plan the future development of the city, avoiding it in elevated
risk areas. Specifically, the figure shows how several areas of the entire municipality are
at risk, especially to the North-West and South.
Etnean eruptions can even comprise complex events, which for Etna are fairly typ-
ical, such as lava emission from an extensive system of eruptive fissures propagating
downslope over a length of several kilometers. We have performed an analysis for such
an eruption on the east-northeast flank of Etna, not far from the 1928 eruption site,
with lava emission from a fissure system about 7km long. The eruptive system was ap-
proximated by a subset of vents of the simulation grid and all lava flows originated from
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