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Guidance

Outputs should be interpreted carefully. The NVM is designed to support planning, comparison, and decision-making, not to provide exact predictions for a specific future eruption.

Considerations

  • Uncertainty in eruption occurrence, eruption magnitude, wind conditions, and ash dispersal
  • Uncertainty in building exposure information and replacement or repair costs
  • Uncertainty in vulnerability relationships and expert-derived damage estimates
  • Limitations of modelling ashfall separately from other volcanic hazards
  • Differences between national-scale modelling and local site-specific assessment

Appropriate uses

The current ashfall building outputs are most appropriate for:

  • Comparing volcanic ashfall building risk across regions
  • Understanding relative contributions from different volcanic sources
  • Supporting strategic resilience planning
  • Informing emergency management preparedness
  • Exploring sensitivity to vulnerability and loss assumptions

Limitations

The current implementation focuses on volcanic ashfall impacts to buildings. It does not yet provide a complete multi-hazard volcanic risk assessment, and it does not directly model infrastructure disruption, agricultural losses, life safety, or wider social and economic impacts.

Results should be treated as nationally consistent risk estimates. For project design, engineering assessment, emergency response operations, or local planning decisions, NVM outputs should be used alongside local data, expert judgement, and other relevant hazard and impact information.

Source report

The current ashfall building damage component is documented in:

Hayes, J.L.; Williams, J.H.; Magill, C.R.; O'Leary, T.M.; Bebbington, M.; Wilson, T.M.; Leonard, G.S.; Fitzgerald, R.H.; Craig, H.; Lindsay, J. 2026. National Volcano Model: Probabilistic volcanic ash building damage. GNS Science report 2026/21. DOI: 10.21420/NSEH-1881.