Professor Willy Aspinall

Summary

Volcanology and seismology, and the formalised use of expert judgement in decision-making for low probability / high consequence events in circumstances of scientific or engineering uncertainty. Probabilistic assessment of earthquake and volcanic hazards and risks.

Biography

I received BSc and PhD degrees in Physics from the University of Durham in 1966 and 1970 respectively. From 1970 to 1983 I was a Research Fellow at the University of the West Indies. From 1983 to 1989 I was Senior Earth Scientist at Principia Mechanica Ltd, and have been Principal Consultant for Aspinall and Associates since 1989.
In 2009 I became Cabot Professor in Natural Hazards & Risk Science at the University of Bristol.
In 2010 I advised the UK Government regarding the volcanic ash clouds following eruptions at Eyjafjallajökull in Iceland.
I was awarded the William Smith Medal by The Geological Society of London in 2012. 

 

 

Keywords

• seismology
• Volcanology
• earthquake assessment

Memberships

Organisations

School of Earth Sciences

Earth Sciences staff

• Earth Sciences academic staff including research fellows

Research groups

• Volcanology

Research themes

• Crustal Magmatism, Volcanism and Geological Risk

Links

• Cabot Institute

Recent publications

• Bamber, JL, Oppenheimer, M, Kopp, RE, Aspinall, WP & Cooke, RM, 2019, ‘Ice sheet contributions to future sea-level rise from structured expert judgment’. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, vol 166., pp. 11195-11200
• Cashman, NR, Tyshenko, MG, Cheung, R, Aspinall, W, Wong, M & Krewski, D, 2019, ‘Prion disease risk uncertainties associated with urine-derived and recombinant fertility drugs’. International Journal of Risk Assessment and Management, vol 22., pp. 109-127
• Barons, MJ & Aspinall, W, 2019, ‘Anticipated impacts of Brexit scenarios on UK food prices using structured expert judgement: implications for policies on poverty and health’. arXiv.
• Aspinall, W & Woo, G, 2019, ‘Counterfactual Analysis of Runaway Volcanic Explosions’. Frontiers in Earth Science, vol 7.
• Hincks, T, Aspinall, W, Cooke, R & Gernon, T, 2018, ‘Oklahoma’s induced seismicity strongly linked to wastewater injection depth’. Science, vol 359., pp. 1251-1255
• Christophersen, A, Deligne, NI, Hanea, AM, Chardot, L, Fournier, N & Aspinall, WP, 2018, ‘Bayesian Network Modeling and Expert Elicitation for Probabilistic Eruption Forecasting: Pilot Study for Whakaari/White Island, New Zealand’. Frontiers in Earth Science, vol 6.
• Beven, KJ, Almeida, S, Aspinall, WP, Bates, PD, Blazkova, S, Borgomeo, E, Freer, J, Goda, K, Hall, JW, Phillips, JC, Simpson, M, Smith, PJ, Stephenson, DB, Wagener, T, Watson, M & Wilkins, KL, 2018, ‘Epistemic uncertainties and natural hazard risk assessment - Part 1: A review of different natural hazard areas’. Natural Hazards and Earth System Sciences, vol 18., pp. 2741-2768
• Bamber, J, Oppenheimer, M, Kopp, R, Cooke, R & Aspinall, W, 2018, ‘Ice sheet contributions to future sea level rise from a structured expert judgement approach’.
• Quigley, J, Colson, A, Aspinall, W & Cooke, RM, 2018, ‘Elicitation in the classical model’. in: International Series in Operations Research and Management Science. Springer, New York, NY, pp. 15-36
• Beven, K, Almeida, SM, Aspinall, W, Bates, P, Blazkova, S, Borgomeo, E, Goda, K, Phillips, J, Simpson, M, Smith, P, Stephenson, D, Wagener, T, Watson, M & Wilkins, K, 2018, ‘Epistemic uncertainties and natural hazard risk assessment - Part 2: Different natural hazard areas’. Natural Hazards and Earth System Sciences, vol 18., pp. 2769-2783

View complete publications list in the University of Bristol publications system