Volcanic regions offer some of the most captivating and fertile environments on Earth, attracting people with their natural beauty, rich soils, and geothermal energy that can be harnessed from underground magma. These unique features not only provide a stunning backdrop for life and tourism but also a source of sustainable resources that can enhance the quality of living for those who call these regions home.
However, living near a volcano comes with an undeniable risk: the irrefutable possibility of an eruption from a volcano that has been dormant for decades, unleashing a powerful and destructive force that can devastate an entire community by destroying critical infrastructure, cutting off essential services, and destroying homes or rendering them uninhabitable for months, or worse, years.
Fortunately, in today’s digital age, cutting-edge technology solutions are available to assist in designing, rebuilding, and protecting the essential infrastructure of these regions when volcanic eruptions strike.
Last month, Autodesk University 2024 hosted a general session entitled, “Fighting Nature: Design and Build of Lava Diversion Barriers for Ever-Changing Volcanic Eruptions in Iceland,” to highlight how Autodesk tools and other advanced technology solutions were used to help design and construct lava diversion barriers in the Reykjanes Peninsula of Iceland amid ongoing volcanic eruptions.
During the session, Hallgrímur Örn Arngrímsson, Civil Engineer and Business Manager of Verkís Consulting Engineers discussed the challenges the various volcanic eruptions have caused within the Reykjanes Peninsula and the advanced technology solutions that were used to help construct lava diversion barriers to divert lava flows away from essential infrastructure in the region.
Volcanic eruptions devastate the Reykjanes Peninsula
After more than 800 years of dormancy, the Fagradalsfjall volcano erupted on March 19, 2021, marking the beginning of an event that would continue for six months. While this eruption didn’t cause significant damage, it raised widespread concern about the potential threat of future eruptions to vital infrastructure in the region, which happens to be the most densely populated area of Iceland.
In response to these concerns, the Department of Civil Protection and Emergency Management established the Infrastructure Protection Group (IPG) in 2021. This group was comprised of scientists, Verkis Consulting Engineers, and a range of other experts from various fields. The IPG’s mission was to devise strategies to safeguard critical infrastructure and protect towns throughout the Reykjanes Peninsula from the potentially devastating impacts of future volcanic activity.
As anticipated, a few years later in December 2023, after weeks of intense earthquake activity, authorities evacuated nearly four thousand residents from the small town of Grindavík after another volcanic eruption unfolded from both ends of a large fissure at the Sundhnúksgígar crater row. The eruption spewed lava across approximately two miles, causing significant destruction.
According to Arngrímsson, Multiple homes in Grindavík were obliterated, various roads and powerlines were damaged, and a vital hot water pipeline near The Blue Lagoon, which supplied most of the region’s hot water, was destroyed.
The lava flows also came dangerously close to demolishing the Svartsengi Geothermal Power Plant that supplies electricity to three thousand people, underscoring the need for advanced solutions to help protect essential infrastructure in the region from potential volcanic activity that may persist for years, if not decades, into the future.
Digital design solutions protect Infrastructure in Iceland
After studying how other volcanic regions had protected their critical infrastructure from past eruptions, the IPG concluded that modeling and constructing lava diversion barriers to divert lava flows was the most effective strategy to protect the infrastructure in and around Grindavík and the Blue Lagoon from future eruptions.
Given the unpredictable nature of lava flows—where no two flows are ever the same—this project presented significant challenges. “The forces are [tremendous] when trying to fight nature,” expressed Arngrímsson. He further explained that each eruption requires unique parameters, as every eruption produces lava with distinct characteristics.
With that in mind, the IPG team started this project by capturing aerial photos of both areas using drones and integrated those images into HEC-RAS, a water modeling software traditionally used for designing river system water flows. By changing the fluid properties within HEC-RAS, they were able to simulate lava flows, allowing them to test various parameters and designs for the lava diversion barriers.
After gathering the necessary parameters for the barriers, the design team incorporated them into a 3D modeling software to begin designing the lava diversion barriers around the entire town of Grindavík, the Blue Lagoon, and the Svartsengi Geothermal Power Plant. “We modeled everything in Civil 3D,” stated Arngrímsson. “We [also] did the material takeoff and cost estimate directly from Civil 3D.”
During the construction phase, the contractors sourced local materials—including rock, ash, and earth from previous lava flow deposits—and began building the lava diversion barriers. According to Arngrímsson, “On the lava side [of the barrier] we tried to [make it] as smooth as possible so the lava can travel alongside it… and the height and width of the barriers can be extended and adjusted [as needed].”
The IPG team worked diligently while building the barriers, driven by the pressing risk of another eruption. Fortunately, they could quickly communicate and share project data through a cloud-based construction management platform called Autodesk Construction Cloud (ACC). As Arngrímsson noted, “Everything had to happen quickly, so we used ACC for communication… it gave us direct access to all of the [barrier] models, making the process fast and it was easy to use.”
Protecting critical infrastructure against nature’s relentless forces is no easy feat, but with powerful advanced tools like ACC, Civil 3D, and HEC-RAS, resilience is not only possible—it’s within reach.
