AI Lunch + Learn: AI-driven Detection of Volcano Earthquakes in Rwanda and DRC
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LBC 203-Stibbs Room
AI Lunch + Learn: AI-driven Detection of Volcano Earthquakes in Rwanda and DRC illustration

Join the Center for Community-Engaged Artificial Intelligence (CEAI), the Connolly Alexander Institute for Data Science (CAIDS), and the SSE AI4All Taskforce for an AI Lunch and Learn Seminar.

SPEAKERS
Cynthia Ebinger, Marshall-Heape Chair, Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences
Cirus Kalugana, PhD Student, Earth and Environmental Sciences Department

TITLE
AI-driven Detection of Volcano Earthquakes in Rwanda and DRC

ABSTRACT
Earthquakes generate seismic waves (e.g., Primary, P, and Secondary, S) spanning a broad frequency spectrum, including distinct seismic phases that are used to detect and locate events. Earthquakes associated with fluid movement beneath volcanoes are critical to eruption early warning, but these earthquakes are unusually low frequency and lack clear impulsive arrivals, making them difficult to identify and locate using AI and ML automated workflows. For the past 16 years, we have worked with scientists and policymakers in Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) to improve volcano early warning systems for Africa’s two most dangerous volcanoes: Nyiragongo and Nyamuragira. Both countries urgently need automatic detection systems for the low-frequency, deep earthquakes that signal magma and gas movement, and what may be fluid transfer between the two nearby volcanoes. We report ongoing work to train, benchmark, and implement ML-based and AI tools for low-frequency event detection. Models will identify emergent, low-frequency signals without clear phase arrivals.

BIOS

  • Cynthia Ebinger is Marshall-Heape Chair in the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences at Tulane University. After a Ph.D. in marine geophysics in the MIT/Woods Hole Oceanographic Joint Program, she held a NATO fellowship at Leeds University, where she became a lecturer in 1991, followed by reader and professor at Royal Holloway University of London. Her work with international, multi-disciplinary research teams focuses on the time and length scales of magmatism, faulting, and fluid migration in rift zones, and on ocean island volcanoes. She has conducted much of her research on the East African Rift. She was the British Geophysical Association’s Bullerwell Lecturer in 2004, and her most prized award is the Addis Ababa Geophysical Observatory Career Service Award in 2007. In 2021, she was awarded the Geological Society of America’s Woollard Award for her contributions to geophysics and geodynamics.
  • Cirus Kalugana is a PhD student in the Earth and Environmental Sciences Department. He completed his BS in Physics at Makerere University (Uganda) and his MS at the East African Institute for Fundamental Research in Kigali, Rwanda.

ACCESSIBILITY INFORMATION|
The Lavin-Bernick Center (LBC) is an accessible building with push-button access and elevators. Enter the LBC at the East Entrance on McAlister Place. An elevator, located directly to the right, will take you to the second floor, where the event room, the Stibbs Room, is located. Please contact Meg Keenan at mkeenan@tulane.edu or 504-862-8381 for other accessibility accommodations. Please note that advance notice is necessary to arrange some accessibility needs.