Music from Volcanoes on the Network
Domenico Vicinanza – domenico.vicinanza@cern.ch
CERN – IT Division, CH-1211 Geneve 23 - Switzerland
University of Salerno - DMI, IT-84084 Fisciano (SA) – Italy
Hugo Yepez – hyepes@igepn.edu.ec
Instituto Geofísico - EPN Ladrón de Guevara e11-253, Apartado 2759
Quito – Ecuador
Keywords
ALICE, CEDIA, CERN, CLARA, EELA, EGEE, EPN, GÉANT2, Global
Research Networking, Grids, GILDA, INFN, Latin America, RedCLARA,
Volcanoes.
Abstract
Current knowledge of volcanic eruptions does not yet allow scientists to
predict future eruptions. But since the sonification of volcano seismograms of
Mount Etna has been carried out within the context of the EGEE and EELA
Projects, the scientific community is one step nearer to the prediction asset.
Scientists from Italy and Ecuador have translated the patterns of Mount
Tungurahua’s volcanic behavior into sound waves. The EU funded “Enabling
Grids for E-sciencE” (EGEE) and the “E-Infrastructure shared between
Europe and Latin America” (EELA) projects, which had already investigated
volcano sonification at Mount Etna, Sicily, have been using the GÉANT2 and
RedCLARA networks to analyse Ecuador’s Tungurahua volcano.
Data sonification is the representation of data by sound signals. It can be
considered as the acoustic counterpart of data graphic visualization, a
mathematical mapping of information from data sets to sounds. Thanks to the
possibility of describing (by means of sounds) patterns or trends which were
hardly perceivable otherwise, data sonification is currently used in several
fields and for different purposes: science and engineering, education and
training. It acts mainly as data analysis and interpretation tool.
In the scientific context, it has previously been used to analyse astronomical
data from the Shoemaker Levy comet collision with Jupiter and during the
Cassini spaceship mission, allowing checking regular phenomena and
performing measures.
Data presentation and exploration systems could benefit greatly from the
addition of sonification capabilities, even in such cases where the visual
inspection is the preferred way to process the data (seismology).
Finally, sonic representations are particularly useful when dealing with
complex data, allowing a natural multidimensional representation (using the
different sound properties, amplitude, waveform, spatial position …), or in data
monitoring tasks. Sonification, indeed, may give information about the inner
structure of the represented data using the power of an abstract description:
any kind of regularity in the original data set will be reflected to the aural signal
generated by the audification algorithm.
Geophysical data sonification within Grid infrastructures has been applied
since 2003. Initially the sonification process has been applied to data collected
by a digital seismograph placed on the Etna volcano in Italy and recently to
data collected on the Tungurahua volcano in Ecuador. 60252 samples were
analyzed.
The hope is to learn more about eruption dynamics from patterns (and pattern
evolution) in the sonograms.
In the case of the sonifications of volcano Tungurahua, the Latin American
and European scientists collected the geophysical information on seismic
movements which were then transformed into audible sound waves using the
process of data sonification. In a second step the sound waves were also
“scored” as melody. The resulting volcanic music can be analysed for patterns
of behaviour and self similarities in eruption dynamics that can then be used
to predict the future activity of a volcano.
The software used for the sonification was developed by Dr. Domenico
Vicinanza at the Italian Institute of Nuclear Physics (INFN) in collaboration
with the University of Salerno for use at Mount Etna. Dr. Vicinanza and Prof.
Roberto Barbera from the University of Catania, Technical Coordinator of the
EELA Project and Coordinator of the GILDA Project, have collaborated with
colleagues from the National Geophysics Institute in Ecuador to study the
Tungurahua volcano, one of Ecuador’s most active volcanoes. Data are
transferred from the Ecuadorian NREN, CEDIA, to GARR in Italy via
RedCLARA’s 622Mbps connection to GÉANT2.
The computing power needed to run such sonifications (and analyze patterns)
and the mass storage required to keep the results, are really large. To create
one minute of music coming from volcanoes, the algorithm has to process
more than 2.6 millions data, taking more than 100 Mbytes of disk space and
10-12 CPU hours on a state-of-the-art PC. This is the why Grid is a natural
platform for this kind of studies.
Moreover the possibility, granted by the Grid, to have a unique (distributed)
shared database for all the seismological data, accessible from the researcher
of all the world will surely pave the way for a more effective and quick
interaction among researcher (even coming from different fields).
The objective of EELA is to bring the countries of the Latin American region to
the level of the European developments, in terms of the e-Infrastructures and
through Specific Support Actions. With the help of the networking
infrastructure, which has reached stability through the RedCLARA network,
the main result of the ALICE project, the focus of EELA it is on Grid
infrastructure and related e-Science applications, such as Earth Sciences, the
scope of action of Dr. Vicinanza’s project.
RedCLARA allows EELA to unite Europe with Latin America and, therefore, to
be able to accomplish its goals in terms of e-Infrastructure (the Grid and the
test beds) and scientific network. Through its interconnection from Sao Paulo
(Brazil) to the GEANT2 PoP in Madrid, RedCLARA supports the EELA
project. The broad band capacity allows and encourages the development of
advanced grid applications and therefore the development of e-Science and
closer collaboration between Latin America and Europe.
Acknowledgments
Authors thank in particular the support provided by the EELA Project (Einfrastructure shared between Europe and Latin America, http://www.eueela.org), contract n° 026409 - 6th Framework Programme for Research,
Technological Development and Demonstration (FP6). The GILDA
(https://gilda.ct.infn.it) Team is also acknowledged for the help provided in
interfacing the application described in this abstract with the gLite
(http://www.glite.org) grid middleware.
Authors Biographies
Domenico Vicinanza
Domenico Vicinanza is co-founder of the SoundLab at the University of
Salerno and he works at CERN in the GRID Deployment group (EUMEDGRID
project). He is also responsible for Data Sonification Projects at the Salerno
Conservatory of Music. His current works focuses on GRID monitoring, testing
and certification within the IT division at CERN and on data sonification. As a
computer music composer he took part to several concerts and organized
computer arts live exhibitions.
Domenico has a PhD in Physics and post-doc activity in computer science,
sound synthesis, scientific data sonification and computer art.
Hugo Yepez
Hugo Yepez is the Head of the National Geophysics Institute of Escuela
Politécnica Nacional – EPN, considered as the National Reference Center for
seismic and volcanic activity in Ecuador. Through this Center, he has been
working closely with the community to prevent the impact of natural
phenomena as well as promoting the national and local planning to be able to
respond quickly and accordingly based on this type of events.
Hugo has been also leading the activities of the Institute to create the National
risk volcanic activity map and the creation of the seismic map of Ecuador.